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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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REASON 

THE TRUE ARBITER OF LANGUAGES- 
CUSTOM A TYRANT ; 

OR 

INTELLECT 

SET FREE FROM ARBITRARY AUTHORITY : 

IN WHICH ARE SHOWN 

THE ABSURD rTTES 
OF GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC, 

THEIR TENDENCY TO ENSLAVE THE MIND ; 

THE CLOSE CONNECTION 
BETWEEN MENTAL AND POLITICAL BONDAGE) 

THE INJUSTICE AND IMPOLICY 
OF DESPOTIC AUTHORITY. 

LONDON: 

printed for j. johnson and co. 
st. Paul's churchyard. 

1814-. 







KiCHARD AVB AftTHLR TAYLOR, 

f Printers" Court, Shoe Lane. 



PREFACE. 



Itf making books there is no end, and but 
too little discretion ; and even in writing books 
authors are often injudicious ; for every useless 
book is a new stone thrown to the old pile 
that obstructs improvement. Perhaps the au- 
thor of this has contributed his part also to 
hinder useful knowledge, freedom of thought, 
and manly independence ; for whose judgement 
is infallible ? If however his work should prove a 
hinderance or stumbling-block, he is at least sure 
of this, that it must have the honour or disgrace 
of lying somewhere by itself; for it was not 
hewn out of the old quarry, nor taken out of 
the old heap, and shaped or polished into a new 
form. 

There is indeed one book whose principles 
of language and those of the author are es- 
sentially the same; and his grateful acknow- 
ledgements for benefits received from it will 
be distinctly and fully made in the proper 
place ; for ne would as soon reap where another 

a 2 



IV 



had sown without paying for seed and labour, 
as appropriate to himself the merit of any dis- 
covery due to another. 

The author of that book and the author of 
this, both journeyed with one intent, and with 
their faces towards the same object ; but started 
from opposite points and proceeded in opposite 
directions, as one to go round the world by tra- 
velling eastward, and another by travelling west- 
ward ; or as one to come to London from York, 
and another from Canterbury. He began at the 
foundation, I at the roof of the building. His 
aim was to show that popular theories of lan- 
guage rested on sand, or in clouds as castles in 
the air : my aim was to remove the superstruc- 
ture ; and as he confined himself chiefly to 
words, I have hitherto confined myself chiefly 
to rules. 

My object in putting pen to paper was, to 
treat exclusively of language. Every thing of 
a different complexion came unsought and un- 
expectedly, mingling with my thoughts from 
affinity to my subject. Freedom is essentially 
the same under all possible varieties. All the 
species are not only comprehended in the ge- 
nus, but connected as links in a chain, of which 
if you pull one the rest will follow. Thus, when 



I meant to treat only of intellectual freedom, 
I brought also into view political freedom be- 
fore I was well aware. Probably this declara- 
tion will be discredited ; but if asseverations 
are like bank notes depreciated, or like oaths 
become worth nothing, the author cannot help 
it ; nor will he vex himself with what he cannot 
alter. 

The author hopes not to make his way by 
petitioning ; but he has one favour to solicit of 
the reader : that he read and judge for himself, 
and estimate the book not as he would estimate 
a bank note, though both are made of paper. 
Such accompaniments to paper as water-mark, 
bank name, and banker's name, or other re- 
spectable names through whose hands it has 
passed, serve very well where there is no intrin- 
sic value. And if books were like bank notes, 
such servants in waiting would conduct them 
every where as ablution and supreme unction 
send the soul to heaven. The currency depends 
entirely on credit. The whole is matter of faith, 
and the stronger that faith is, the greater the 
quiet of the reader, (for doubts are troublesome) 
and the greater is the glory of the author. 

But, reader, I wrote not to your faith — though 
a little to your fancy, for your amusement and 



VI 



my own — I wrote chiefly to your understand- 
ing ; therefore judge of my book as you would 
judge of a guinea, which may have the image 
and superscription of Caesar, George or Alex* 
ander, or no distinct image or superscription 
at all, yet if true gold and full weight is a good 
guinea. The coin which I offer you is from my own 
mint, for I have neither pretended nor attempt- 
ed to imitate any king's image, or to forge any 
princely signature ; but though my coin is not 
forged, yet it may be bad, being base metal and 
light weight. This you and you alone ought 
to judge of; put it into your own scales; 
for I will not insult you by supposing that 
you do not keep scales of your own, but must 
run over to Mr. Reviewer's or Doctor Cri- 
tic's that he may tell you what is good be- 
fore you receive it, or what is bad before you 
reject it. You know well that there are quack 
doctors who praise only patent medicines be- 
cause themselves are the venders. 

I am not afraid of your thinking my money 
heavy as old penny pieces, which you would 
willingly exchange for new because the new are 
lighter. This I am willing to risk, and there- 
fore insist upon your zveighing all I offer you. 

Reader, I have feed no counsel, I have pro- 



Vll 



cured no patron — my book must plead its own 
cause, or suffer judgement by default. It must 
be its own patron, or perish unprotected. 

I conclude with quoting a few prefatory sen- 
tences from an old favourite ; because I think 
them peculiarly appropriate. 

" Reader, if you be wise and good, you are 
above my epithets, and more above my flat- 
teries ; yet you may expect a Preface to excuse 
this Address. The habit is somewhat strange, 
and myself so little acquainted with it, that I 
cannot much wonder if others should gaze upon 
it: but account me a stranger, and you will 
forgive me. 

"It is no matter mho, but what is here pre- 
sented to your view. I cannot excuse it either 
for matter or manner. It hath much folly to 
my sight; and more I believe than I yet see. 
It may be also somewhat false, although I know 
it not. This should not prejudice all ; for there 
are spots above the clouds ; and the kingdom 
of Heaven itself was like a field of wheat with 
many tares : how much more, how much worse 
must it be with a frail man !" 



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$ 



,v* 



THE USE OF LANGUAGE 

EXAMINED. 



IT is of admitted importance that men think justly. 
To think justly, they must think clearly ; and to 
think clearly, they must know the use of language, the 
instrument of thought. A microscope and telescope 
defeat their intention in ignorant hands ; concealing, 
obscuring, or distorting all objects ; and to see ob- 
jects in their true shapes with a telescope, its use 
must be first understood : so to think aright, or to 
convey thought aright by language, the instrument of 
thought, its true use must be understood. To under- 
stand any instrument well, we must strip it of all mere 
accompaniments ; as covers, ornaments, or any mere 
appendage whatever. And especially must we re- 
move such appendages as are supposed to be essen- 
tial parts of the instrument or machine ; for just notions 
of it cannot be obtained while that supposition lasts. 
He who thinks the seal, the chain, the case, the glass, 
or any mere appendage to the watch-work essential 
to its movement, (as a savage might suppose on first 
seeing it,) completely mistakes it ; and to give him 
correct notions, I would take off the seals, the chain, 

B 



the case, and thus on successively, removing mere 
appendages till I left nothing but the essential, the 
true and proper watch : as the grave-digger in Ham- 
let strips off the first, second and succeeding covers, 
till he leaves nothing but the proper digger fit for his 
work. It will be soon found that the coverings 
which have been put on language are as absurd, and 
as obstructive to business, as the supernumerary gar- 
ments of the grave-digger ; and if, in taking the fool's 
coat from Grammar, we put the fool's cap on the 
Grammarian, it is not to make sport to the specta- 
tors, but to promote their improvement by convin- 
cing their judgement ; for many can feel the force of 
ridicule who cannot feel the force of argument ; and 
therefore ridicule convinces where reason fails. 

When language is once stripped of its many coats 
of many colours, it will be found to be very simple ; 
and its utility and excellence will be seen to consist 
in its simplicity. Simplicity therefore is to be the 
central point of all my movements, and simplification 
my sole work, whether at home in our own language, 
or travelling abroad in the wildernesses of learned 
languages and learned men ; for I have sufficiently 
explored these regions to know the chief causes of 
perplexity, and the principles on which the labyrinth 
is constructed ; and I have learned to disesteem such 
a stupendous monument of art, which serves only to 
bewilder intellect ; and shall, without regret for a 
single column, arch, or fretted roof, hurl all back to 
chaos, or level all down into simplicity, that the way- 
faring man though simple may not err 3 and he who 
runneth may not stumble. 



One language is as sufficient for my purpose as 
many ; as one telescope would be as sufficient for show- 
ing the use of a telescope as a thousand on a thou- 
sand different constructions with every possible va- 
riety of power and accompaniment. The English 
language is the very best in the world for our pur- 
pose, because we are best acquainted with it ; and 
"because too of its simplicity ; for, if it be not the sim- 
plest, (for it has been marred of its simplicity as well 
as shorn of its strength,) if not the simplest, it is one 
of the simplest in all the earth ; and is therefore (I 
say it in spite of contradiction) one of the best, for 
the real purpose of language, that ever was, now is, 
or ever shall be ; and we have a language of our 
own, corrupted as it is by learned officiousness and 
affectation ; and writers in that language (I mean no 
servile brood of imitators) above all Greek and Roman 
name, as simple Scottish, Irish, and Welch music are 
above all the heartless artificially complicated music 
that was ever manufactured in Rome, Paris, or London. 

Simplicity is every thing in science, and therefore 
every thing in language, the great instrument of 
science ; and for the sake of simplicity I shall con- 
fine myself in the first instance to the English lan- 
guage, beginning with what are commonly called its 
rules of Grammar. This may seem, indeed, like be- 
ginning at the dome instead of the foundation ; and 
that is my very reason for beginning thus ; for I have 
set myself not to build up, but to pull down ; neither 
to plant, but to root up. And when a structure ve- 
nerable for years, which our forefathers erected with 
infinite art and labour, is to be taken down, it would 

B 2 



be barbarous to undermine it, or blow it up : per* 
chance it containeth beams of cedar, as well as raft- 
ers of fir; and gold, silver, and precious stones, as 
well as wood, hay, and stubble. And it is well known 
that rats and such creatures used to be blamed for 
hiding what silver and gold they could lay their 
hands and teeth on, up in the roofs of houses, espe- 
cially if they were old and decayed with years. Let 
us therefore begin our work with the roof; and all 
lovers of simplicity and" mental freedom will be 
pleased if we can show that some of the rules of En- 
glish grammar ought to be thrown to the moles and 
to the bats as their portion for ever : and if we throw 
the whole to the rubbish heap beyond the walls of the 
city, they will join all the schoolboys just let loose 
from the yoke in shouting when the work is done. 

Rules of grammar to the rubbish heap? exclaim all 
the grammarians of the age. They are to keep people 
from stumbling among stones, or falling over rubbish 
— they are the guides of thought and expression — the 
finger-post to show the way. — 'Beg pardon, gentlemen, 
for differing from you, though I am sorry to contra- 
dict, and hope you will not be angry at me, an ob- 
scure untitled man, for saying that language is itself 
the rule, the guide, the finger-post, and was both guide 
and law to itself, as well as to man, in receiving and 
giving thought, long before such a thing as grammar 
was thought of or heard of ; for you will not say that 
Homer made his poetry according to rules of 
grammar ; or that our forefathers could not think 
their own thoughts, nor speak their own words, with 
propriety; till grammar-masters came over from Greece 



and Rome to tell them about verbs and nominatives, 
concord and government, number and person. 

As right law is before all precedents and indepen- 
dent of them, so true language is before all rules of 
grammar and independent of them. And what is 
more, these rules are nothing but precedents, collected 
and consecrated into authorities to the dishonour of 
the only true supreme authority in either law or lan- 
guage, that is, reason. But as knaves and fools call 
precedents law, so ignorant servile grammarians call 
precedents grammar ; and not content with this, they 
call the simplicity of nature defect, and their own 
spider-web additions to it excellence. 

Johnson, in his usual pompous manner, utters 
great swelling words of vanity about " spots of barba- 
rity, impressed so deep in the English language that 
criticism can never wash them away," Sure enough 
we have had much boasting and meddling of criti- 
cism ; and washermen and washerwomen critics have 
been very officious with their soap and water and 
brush, to wash away spots of barbarity : but the lan- 
guage has fared m their hands as good furniture usually 
fares in the hands of ignorant washerfolks, which is al- 
ways injured by their attempts at improvement. Had it 
not been for their officiousness, youth would not have 
been perplexed with arbitrary rules ; nor would intel- 
lect have been the feeble, hampered, timorous baby 
it is, always in leading-strings with its eye upon its 
grandmother. 

Wherever there has been much art, as in Greece and 
Rome, you are sure to find a multitude of rules for 
every thing ; wherever there is more of the simplicity 



of nature, you find fewer rules, or none at all. Hence, 
as the English language had no rules of syntax at 
first, and ought tc have none now, so Hebrew has none. 
Hebrew no rules of grammar ? exclaims Mordecai. 
Yes ; many rules. My friend Moses has published 

a G rammar at a guinea price, — and the vowel points 

Keep thy temper, Mordecai ; for, if thy friend Moses 
were to publish a Grammar as large as Solomon's 
temple, and as muddy as the pool of Siloam, I 
would tell thee that every thing necessary to learning 
Hebrew might be put in a nutshell ; and that, in- 
stead of wandering with you in the wilderness for years, 
any person might come to Zion's top in a few months. 
'i*l4r**J ^ est nowever ft should be thought that Hebrew 

t /^fs^ must nay e rules of syntax, I refer to Wilson's Hebrew 

/ ^ ;} ^>^ ttJ Grammar, one of the best introductions not only to 
Hebrew but to universal grammar, because it is one of 
the frankest and simplest. There is no ostentatious 
show of learning in it — no vain and deceitful philoso- 
phy, to conceal ignorance or to silence objection: the 
authority of Custom is not deified. 

Though Mr. Wilson endeavoured to fashion He- 
brew after the models of Greece and Rome , all that 
he could make out (for he had too much modesty to 
call it rule) was such a remark as the following : 
" A^rb^generally agrees with its nominative in gen- 
der, n umber, and person ." page 274, Yet the very first 
sentence of the Bible violates this supposed concord . 
As grammarians had agreed to assign a certain 
number of t ensesjto every_ yerb, they were not a little 
puzzled with the Hebrew in this matter, which seem- 
ed by no means methodical enough for them, — using 



7 

what they call the future frequently instead of the 
pastj and the past i nstead o f the future. " Instances 
of variety or irregularity in the use of the past and 
future tenses frequently occur. These are apt to em- 
barrass at first ; but practice will render them easy 
and intelligible. Whatever happens by custom, habit, 
or the course of nature, is commonly expressed in 
the f uture tense ." Wilson's Hebrew Grammar, p. 279. 
This is utterly unworthy such a man as Wilson, 
though perfectly worthy the Harrises and Johns ons,. 
And Mr. Wilson, with the frankness that always 
marks true learning and true philosophy, immediately 
subjoins a note : " This promiscuous use of the pre 
teriteand future appears to me very inexplicable. 
After all my research, I have found no satisfactory 
account pfjtt." This note is worth all the book. 
And if those who glory in the name of learning and 
philosophy would in their great modesty frequently 
favour us wi th such notes , they would do more good, 
and I for one would admire them more. But most 
of them are priests, who must know, or seem to know, 
the meaning of every text in the bible of learning and 
philosophy, and could, if they would, or had time, or 
it was necessary, make it plain to the meanest capa- 
city. In the mean time they put you off with some 
unmeaning distinctions like those about consubstan- 
tiation. But, for my own part, I like the transubstan- 
tiation of the catholic better, who, having created 
flesh and blood out of bread and wine by the word of 
his mouth, replies to your meddling, prying inquisi- 

tiveness, Mystery You need not try to know, for 

you cannot know ; and there is an end on't. If you 



8 

do not like mutton of his making, you can leave it ; 
unless, indeed, out of love to your soul and your 
stomach, he feed you with a bayonet ; as the tender 
mother forces food into the unwilling child. 

Mr. Wilson might well confess his inability to give 
any satisfactory reason for the promiscuous use of the 
preterite and future tense ; for the truth is, there is no 
preterite jor future ten se in the Hebrew jverb. There 
is neither in it, nor connected with it, any word or con- 
traction of a word, or any mark whatever, expressive 
ofjime^but simply marks or contractions of personal 
pronouns expressive of agents. These contractions 
of pronouns were sometimes placed before and some- 
times after the verb, for this matter was free and op- 
tional. 

Mr. Wilson acknowledges that what are called the 
past and future tenses are both alike formed by con- 
tractions or fragments of the personal pronouns ; or, 
to give the same thing in other words, by personal af- 
fixes and prefixes. How then can they signify or di- 
stinguish tenses ? Persons or agents they may and do 
distinguish ; but tenses they do not and cannot ex- 
press, or any way distinguish ; unless we would sup- 
pose the absurdity (which is indeed but too often 
supposed in language) of significations without signs, 
denotations without marks. 

It is not in the Hebrew only that such absurd and 
bewildering one knows not what to call it, commonly 
dignified with the name of grammar, prevails, to the 
reproach of plain sense and the hinderance of true 
learning. I mean not to enter into the nature of a 
verb here , nor its tenses. But let me ask grammar- 



makers in passing, what they mean by perfect, plupeij. 
feet, and imperfect tenses ? What is t he meaning of 
a pluperfect , perfect, or imperfect century, year, month, 
week, day, hour, minm^oj^moment ? What do they 
mean by tense ? Why, they mean nothing ; for they 
know not what they say, nor whereof theyjiffinm If 
you cannot endow their words with meanings, they won't 
be at the trouble to do it for you. Their language is 
as copious in absurdity as the _Arabic itsel f, which 
the Arabian s say none can understand unless illumi- 
nated with the prophetic sp irit. A Bajl^qnish^ dia- 
lect, which learned pedants much affect, w T ould either 
put out the eyes of our understanding, or persuade us 
we have none ; — as I knew to my cost while they led 
me in the wilderness. I can scarcely look towards 
Egypt or the wilderness and restrain my indignation. 
And surely if I ought to love my neighbour as myself, 
I may be permitted to judge him as I judge myself. 
I always know when I understand a subject; and 
when I understand it I can speak of it intelli gibly, 
and feel the confidence and freedom of a man walking 
in broad daylight. But when I venture to treat of 
what I do not understand (and g rammarians , logicians, 
and metaphysicians taught me to do so, and set me 
the example,) I am embarrassed, and fain to hide my- 
self like Adamwjtlijeaves — I dissemble my perplexity, 
and conceal my folly or m yj vanit y, as well as possible; 
advancing and retreating by means of doubtful or 
false signals. 

Thus have I sometimes warred against plain sense 
and distinct meaning, under the show of philosophy. 
For all sins of this nature I profess repentance ; and 



10 

as a true convert, I would endeavour to bring others 
from the error of their ways to the acknowledgement 
of truth, which is never an abstract thing like a 
vacuum, nor line spun like a silken thread or the 
fibre of a spider's brain. And all who, loving to be 
called of men Rabbi, take away the key of know- 
ledge must come to repentance and make restoration, 
else will I glory in taking it from them by force, or in 
turning the towering wig of their high counsel, or 
high conceit, awry, that the public may laugh them 
to scorn. 

I have been led to introduce the verb before its 
time. It must take its trial in its proper order. In 
the mean time we must proceed to the rules of En- 
glish grammar. 

The business of language is to convey thought ; 
therefore a single word in a sentence, or a single syl- 
lable in a word, which serves not for that purpose, is 
defect rather than excellence ; and any direction what- 
ever concerning these useless supernumeraries, unless 
it be to treat them with disrespect or get rid of them 
as soon as possible, is but a new act of parliament to 
establish an old corruption ; and the new enactment 
is worse than the old corruption, as the knave on the 
bench is worse than the felon at the bar, whom he 
shelters by perverting justice, whether he wrest law or 
quote precedent for the purpose. 
// /sJ> ^ assert (and I mean to prove my assertion) that 

^ ^ ^y there is not one of the twenty- two rules of English gram - 
/fti i* y / jy^ given by Lindley Murray, but is more honoured 
in the breach than in the observance. I take Mur- 
ray's Grammar merely because it is the most popular 



11 

that we have. The author I know nothing of, and 
therefore make no reference to him, and mean no 
disrespect to him whatever. It is the book, and not 
the man, I have to do with ; and I would have treated 
it in the very same manner had any other man, had 
my particular friend, nay had myself written it; and 
it is at least possible that I might have written such a 
book some years ago ; and had I done so, I am sure 
it would have given me much more pleasure to pull 
the system to pieces in a book of my own writing 
than in one written by another. Let this apology 
serve once for all. I would not be rude, but I will 
not waste my own time and that of the reader upon 
compliments. 

RULE FIRST. 

"A verb must agree with its nominative case in num- 
ber and perso n, as I learn, Tho u art improved, The 
birds sing." 

A verb must agree, &c. ; but why must it? for 
every must must have a wherefore, else it is only a 
bold impostor. < Thou learn, he learn,' are wrong ; 
1 Thou learnest, he learneth,' are right. But why are 
those wrong and these right ? tell me that. Both my 
mouth and my ears like learn better than learnest, 
learns, or learneth. Besides, it is sooner written, 
spelt, or spoken, and renders the verb far more sim- 
ple to all, and more easily lear ned b y the young. As 
I would not however please my palate at the expense 
of my stomach, so neither would I please my eyes nor 
my ears nor my tongue, nor my love of ease nor 
my love of simplicity, at the expense of my understand- 



12 

ing. Prove then that est and eth serve to convey 
thought, and the cause is ended. If you say est and 
eth serve respectively to distinguish the second and 
third person singular of the verb from all the other 
persons, I deny the fact, for that service is performed 
without them by the pronouns thou, he, sh e, or it. So 
that est or eth is a useless tail tacked to the verb, 
as much as a dish-cloth pinned to a schoolboy. And 
the evident uselessness of it ought to have led gram- 
mar-makers to inquire how this tail came there ; for 
it is evident it did not grow there. There is nothing 
natural, easy, graceful, or useful, about it All is both 
much more artificial and clumsy too than a false pig- 
tail. 

Grammatical investigation is apt to become dull 
and heavy when conducted solely as a rigorous pro- 
cess of the understanding, so that I am always will- 
ing to let the business go into the hands of Fancy, 
provided it be what he is fully competent to, and he 
promises to be sober and steady, watching him mean- 
while lest he play the fool. This being hinted, you 
are prepared to hear words literally speak for them- 
selves. 

The second and third persons singular of the En- 
glis h verb were called into the court of Truth, Reason 
being on the throne of Justice, to give account of 
themselves how they came by tails, their neighbours 
having none ; — whether they were ashamed of being 
men, and wished to seem rats or monkeys, having an 
appendage behind; — how or where they made, bought, 
or found, said appendage. 
They replied that they did not go after or in any way 



13 

whatever take to these tails of their own accord ; that 
they were by no means pleased with them nor proud 
of them, for they felt them both as a dead weight and 
disgrace to them ; but that certain men called trans- 
lators had brought them from abroad, they believed 
the name of the place was Italy, and obliged them 
to wear them whether they would or not. 

All this seemed very plausible, and, if proved, second 
and third person singular were not to be blamed but 
pitied, and ought to have the monkey-looking disgrace 
taken from them ; but before any thing could be done 
in the case, facts were to be collected (for facts Rea- 
son said were the best witnesses) and evidence reported. 
Candid-inquiry thus reported : Est and eth, the 
false pig-tails, have been traced to second and third 
persons singular i n Latin. The second and third per- 
sons singular of the Latin verb in the perfect tense 
have isti and it for their terminations, and the 
second person singular of verb substantive is est, and 
third person singular of all the conjugations in all the 
tenses is at, et, or it, which are the very same with 
those of the second and third person singular of verb 
English, only the vowels changed (for vowels are Pro- 
teuses in all languages), and the t of third person sin- 
gular Latin is th in third person singular English, 
that being the manner in which the Saxons spelt it, to 
denote a certain difficult breathing which they give to 
it, chat hardly any of their neighbours can imitate. 

It doth appear upon inquiry, that what are false 
tails to second and third person singular English verb 
are natural hair in the Latin. Every one of its 
persons of the verb has a distinct peculiar ending, with 



14 

a distinct and peculiar meaning ; and these endings 
mean precisely what our pronouns I, thou, he, we, 
you, they, mean ; and are nothing but pronouns or 
contractions of them joined to the verb, as if all one 
word, though in reality two words, or one word com- 
pounded of two. 

It doth appear also that translators, whom we have 
traced back to Alfred the Great, not being aware of 
the above circumstance, thought that the Latin verb 
had something which our verb wanted, and that they 
ought to supply the defect by borrowing from the one 
to the other, though it be as absurd to say ' Thou 
learnest and He learnet h/ as to say ' Thou learn thou, 
He learn he f for est means thou, and eth means 
he^ 

Moreover, it appeareth in evidence that translators, 
poets, critics, courtiers, and priests, have all thus ig- 
norantly done injury to our good old language. Pre- 
tending to mend her defects and smooth her barbari- 
ties, they have shorn her strength and marred her 
simplicity. They have patched her face, and given 
her long robes behind, to look like that high-dressed 
Roman lady, once mistress of the world. 

It doth especially appear that priests have done 
much evil in this way ; for, there being one in every 
parish, and he speaking to the people once or oftener 
every week, commanding them to say after him, he 
saying est^ e th^ or s, at the end of second and third 
person singular ; they learned to say so also, even as 
they learned to swear by praying after him ; for they 
got a habit of saying the words without knowing exactly 
where and when to place them, Thus the parson put 



u 

eth or s at the end of the third person singular ; but 
the good people, not knowing that, thought they could 
not use the stranger too well, and too often, saying * I 
sees, thou sees, he sees, we sees, ye sees, they sees.' 
Grammatical people indeed laugh at ungrammatical 
people for speaking so; whereas they ought rather to 
blush at their own ignorance and folly in first cor- 
rupting language, and then making rules to sanction 
the corruption ; which is establishing absurdity by law, 
like the Athanasjaji^reed^ that it may remain for ever. 
The learned man who says c He learns,' is far more ab- 
surd than the unlearned man who, imitating him as 
he thinks, says ' They learns.' 

Moreover, it doth appear in evidence that there 
ever have been some faithful and steadfast witnesses 
against apostasy from primitive simplicity, and that 
even to this day they may be found speaking the 
old speech, as ' I learn, thou learn, he learn, we learn, 
ye learn, they learn ; I learned, thou learned, he learned, 
we learned, ye learned, they learned. I be, thou be, 
he be, we be, ye be, they be ; I beed, thou beed, he 
beed, we beed, ye beed, they beed.' And such has 
been the noble stand made by good sturdy English 
ears and tongues against vicious innovations, that they 
have not been able to proceed further than to the se- 
cond and third person singular ; nor even to these in 
all cases. Thus was is the third person as well as 
first person singular; had also; and may and might 
are the same in all the persons, except the second 
person singular, as w r ell as other verbs that might be 
named. 

Nay, even out of the mouths of babes and suck- 



16 

lings primitive simplicity obtaineth praise ; for chil- 
dren speak the verb right before they are taught to 
speak it wrong ; and it is with much difficulty that 
these younglings of nature and simplicity are brought 
to say est and eth properly, I mean improperly, or 
to hiss like a serpent at the end of third person sin- 
gular. 

Reason listened attentively with his ear open to 
Evidence, and his eye fixed on Truth, who stood at the 
right hand of Simplicity. His footstool was a mass of 
precedents, to show that as authorities they were ut- 
terly despised ; and that the only use which Wisdom 
makes of former improvements is to stand yet higher 
and see further than those who went before. So rais- 
ing himself from his throne, and standing erect on his 
lofty footstool, Reason decreed and commanded that 
est and eth, and all such foreign intruders, w r ho being 
idle and useless, following no lawful occupation, were 
a burden on the community, be banished forth these 
realms. All the court bowed approb ation. 

But lo ! from without a noise of much tumult — He- 
resy — Jac obinism — Tre ason — Libel against God and 
the King ! Some cried No Law but Preceden t ! others, 
No King^but Custom ! The whole crowd about the 
gate shouted vehemently — None but Custom ! — None 
but Custom ! — Great is Custom ! — Great is Custom ! 
— He is our God, and him only will we serve ! 

This Custom had one Horace for his high-priest, 
who regarded neither reason nor morality, whom 
nevertheless Custom taught collegians and doctors 
greatly to admire ; and every learned clerk in the land 
said after him ; and, as clerks usually say after tha 



17 

priest, said it so fast as to have neither time nor breath 
to think. " I believe in all-potent Custom, the sole ar- 
biter of language. All language is arbitrary , lik e our 
master, and we have none but customary meanings to 
all our words." 



This god Custom being so great in all the earth, 
let us consider the mighty works which he hath done. 
And first in Greece (for we will not follow him further) 
he led men by the ears as if they had been asses — 
(ifjindeed they w r ere not ) — taught them to be angry 
with their old Gothic language for its harshness and 
its consonants, which in musical spite they gnawed 
into vowels. Then sound rather than sense — euphony 
more than meaning, was 'the rage; and all generations 
have called them blessed, for the smoothness of their 
to ngue . But not satisfied with smoothness only, (for 
what is smoothness without infinite art and intricacy?) 
they must have endless variety and wild irregularity. 

One word for one idea is a great defect in language — 

. . o — . : --~a. ; ,..o..- 

simplicity is a plain naked thing — uniformity is dull 
and monotonous. Besides, a simple regular language 
is like an instrument of few strings, or a plain shep- 
herd's pipe, soon learned and easily used ; and what 
every body has or may have, does or may do, is com- 
pion , vile, and worth nothing. 

Therefore our Greeks must go after some new 
thing, or some new word. Novelty, novelty ; variety, 
variety ; only novelty and variety. One dish may do 
for plain hungry stomachs, but dainty palates must 
have variety. Asia and Africa, Phoenicia and iEgyptus 
must be there to offer gifts, or sell their costly wares. 

c 



18 

Now, what with buying and borrowing and manu- 
facturing, Greece is full of all manner of stores, and 
therefore praised for copiousness. Yes ; she is full as 
a house with a thousand watches — a mansion with 
fifty servants — or a stable with twenty horses for one 
rider ; and the great, the full, the heavy-laden Greek 
scholar fails not, in his praises of his Ma ter Verborum , 
to boast her in vincible difficult y. 

If so, we may well say in scorn, Then I'll none of 
it ; adieu to Greek learning ! Fool that thou art ! 
wouldst thou have me serve an apprenticeship my 
whole lifetime? wouldst thou have me spend my 
precious life in learning the use of a telescope, which 
I must lay down without ever looking at a star ? No. 
Couldst thou promise me the age of Methusalem, I 
would not spend thirty years of it in learning to open 
and shut the casket, or to tell what it is made of, or 
the names of fantastic figures upon it, numerous and 
complicated as a Mrvriiith. I would rather break it 
in pieces, than be ever kept or ever diverted from the 
jewel within. 

If thou lovest to crack shells, I love to eat kernels; 
and if thou hast waxen fat upon husks, and must needs 
kick all who won't stall with thee, thou must be con- 
tent to feel the whip in return. And if thou art proud 
of carrying weight, having a mill-stone about thy neck 
and Colossus on thy back, thou canst not be dis- 
pleased if we jump up and ride with or stand upon 
Colossus, which will indeed exalt thee in the scale of 
being; for then thou wilt carry intelligence as well as 
weight. 



r*^r*<-''— 



19 

Yet boast as thou may, the gigantic Gree k is but 
a dwarf to t he Arabic . Though an ocean for copious- 
ness, it is but as a standing pool before the immen- 
sity of space. .,. 

"The^Arabic," says Bishop >Valton, " so far exc els_ dl*-<a^*<P 
all other languages in copiousness, that the various ap- 
pellations of one single thing, and their explanations, 
afford matter for a complete volum e. It hasjfiye 
hundre d names fo^ajion, two hundred for a serpent, x/r/y?*~ * v /^' 
eighty for honey, and ab ove a thousand for a sw ord. ^£* 
THe~Arabs say, none can comprehend its compass, 
unless illuminated by the Prophetic Spirit ! ! " 

Oh ! how poor is Greek t o Arabi c, and how poor 
is nature to art ! We have but one sun in our firma- 
ment, but we may have a thousand names for it; and, 
as if all this were a small thing in our sight, man, 
w T onder-working man, can make a language that God 
must teach him to understand. Boast no more of an 
invincible Greek that is conquered by a roving Arab. 

In Rome, too, we find Custom, that high arbiter, 
acting as tyrannically as in Greece ; and, as tyrants 
always do, corrupting the people from the simplicity 
of their primitive form. Luxury made as much havoc 
on their words as their bodies. Some were seen all 
pimpled a nd bloated — some swelled with go ut_and 
dropsy — some meagre and consumptive — some drag- 
ging after them d ead limbs — some had lost the use of 
all their senses, and could neither speak, see, nor hear 
—many were dying, and dead, and slain, as in a field 
of battle — and of the dead, many were embalmed, be- 
cause of their high quality or extraordinary beauty. 

Rome aspired to rival Greece in the fulness and 



20 

varieties and refinements of luxury, but chiefly in the 
labyrinthian art. Greece had set the example of de- 
parting from nature, and of putting asunder what she 
hath united. The first and oldest method of ranging 
words; the substitutes of things, was to place them in 
the same connection and relation to each other as the 
things themselves whose representatives they were. 
Thus adjective is as closely connected with substan- 
tive in nature, as the sun and his brightness, as a stone 
and its hardness, as water and its softness ; and verb 
and nominative are as closely connected as the tongue 
with the word that drops from it ; or this hand and 
the pen it holds and moves. 

In Hebrew , Gothic, English (a dialect o f Gothic ), 
and other simple primitive tongues, or rather dialects 
of one tongue, the order of nature is preserved ; like 
things are put together — the man has all that belongs 
to him about his person — his coat on his back, his 
hat on hisjiead, and his staff in his hand. Adjective 
and noun, nominative and verb, stand foot to foot 
with hand in hand. 

This, however, is simple and easy; there is no riddle 
about it, to try or prove profound penetration, or eagle- 
eyed perspicacity — nothing finely complicated for fine 
and skilful fingers to put together. Old women and 
young children, rude barbarians and common slaves, 
might understand and do all this as easily as we can 
sing a Scottish or Irish air by only hearing it once or 
twice over ; but an Italian piece of many parts and 
much intricacy — it is only a Master Braham or Ma- 
dame Catalani who has got throat long enough and 
flexible enough for it ; which stretching out as grace- 



21 

fully as a hen drinketh water , she cackles out the 
whole piece as sweetly as Orpheus , as dexterously as 
a fiddler's e lbow, as long-windedly as the pipe j )f_an 
ass, and as proudly as if she had laid a golden eg g- 

In Greece, however, Involution, like all new begin- 
ners, was timid, and did not proceed far ; and, I be^ 
lieve, he would not have ventured so far as he did, 
but for the example of his uncle in Egypt ; for it is 
by slow degrees that men get out of the old road, 
whether it was made by nature or hyjirt His Sa- 
tanic Majesty, a bold original, might get from zenith 
to nadir at one step ; but we mortals creep slowly. 

Involution grew bolder in Italy ; for corruption is 
always emboldened by precedent. And as deformity 
is more exceedingly deformed in the copy than in the 
original — sin more exceedingly sinful in the disciple 
than in the master ; — so I nvolution is more exceed- 
ingly involved in Latin than in Greek . 

Fortunately, human writing consisted of books, 
which were divided into chapters, which were subdi- 
vided into sentences ; for, had it not been for such 
closets and mansions of confinement, Involution might 
have not only torn all nature limb from limb, and 
bone from bone, but scattered her precious members 
to the four winds of heaven, or thrown them to the 
ends of the earth, But, as was right and meet, he was 
kept in close confinement, and only free within the 
limits of sentence, as madman in his cell, where he 
kicked about all that came in his way most furiously. 

If you found Action, you must go search for his 
companion Agent — if you found Substance, you must 
go after all his children, commonly called Qualities. 



22 

Some principle of repulsion and mutual ahhorrence, 
some antisocial spirit seemed to possess them. Verb 
was sure to be at one end , and N ominative at anothe r ; 
and if Substantive ran into one corner, Adjective was 
sure to slip into some hole as far off as po ssible ; for 
probably both were alike_ftightened out of their wits, 
as children at madmen, or as mice a t the c at. If you 
found Homo, you must look for his wig and hat and 
staff; which having brought him, now the old gentle- 
man is prepared to pay his respects to his last friend, 
Terminus ; for all this must be done before he can 
be ~done_mto English . 

Now this said involution of words in a sentence 
is one of the invincible difficulties, and therefore one 
of the inimitable excellencies of Latin over all the lan- 



guages of the earth : for in other respects it is just 
like its neighbours, all of whom speak plainly when 
they choose ; though they sometimes stammer through 
haste or carelessness, but much oftener lisp or mince, 
or burr through affectation. 

Another excellence of Latin is its cases . Now the 
use of cases is concealment. By shutting or locking 
up things of rare worth in cases, they are secured from 
vulg ar eyes andjjngers ; for only the initiated, the fa- 
voured few, have the privilege of seeing and touching 
the sacred mysteries of languag e, commonly called 
meanings. 

Greek has an odd set of cases; but Latin has added 
one more, which makes the even number . As a fiddle 
of six strings, an instrument of six joints, screws, pegs 
or pins, a box of six lids or slides, must excel one with 
pnly five : so Latin must in cases greatly excel Greek, 



£>3 

As for such naked things as English nouns, many 
of whom have no box or case whatever to carry their 
clothes in, or change of raiment, or cloak, coat, or 
shirt to their back ; they may shiver of cold till they 
perish, or be burned black as an ^Ethiop ian. Let such 
naked savages skulk into their woods and caves and 
holes, and not come among civilized , philosophized 
men , well refined from the grossness of nature, and 
who have covered her nakedness with costly apparel ; 
having fetched the furs of Siberia, the purples of Tyre, 
the ivory of Africa, the silks and diamonds of India 
to adorn her withal : Art having done so much for 
Nature that she no longer appears. 

Be it remembered, too, that cases have no separate 
meaning of their own. That is, they are truly and 
properly cases, which till they are filled are void and 
empty as judge's wig without the hard body of law 
and shoal of precedents, or college pate without brains, 
or an addle egg without wholesome substance. The 
case is quite empty ; only its size and shape and po- 
sition tell us what value is under it ; for we philoso- 
phers, who contrived cases for our gold, agreed by 
mutual consent always to put a piece of true current 
coin of such value under a case of such shape and 
size, which stands always in the proper place, and 
must be there and no where else, as we have afore 
agreed upon. 

Thus, provided with a proper set of cases, as every 
learned clerk well knows, gold and silver, all that is 
choice, rare, and good, is much more plentiful and 
secure in Greece and Italv than in all the world be- 
side \ and Rule Britannia with her trident and her 



24 

Magna Charta, and her b arracks , and her martello 
towers, and her Att orney-general , and all his army, 
could not keep he r gold , merely for want of cases to 
put it in, and was obliged to make paper guinea s ; 
for these do as well in a bag as a case, and sleep soundly 
in the lap of their mother among the rags of a beggar's 
wallet. It is true, paper guineas are not so weighty 
as golden ones : but they are for that reason less cum- 
bersome, and more easily got rid of; for they are 
truly riches that make unto themselves wings and fly 
away. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Grocer never say they 
have enough of them ; for perhaps they make them 
into measures for his royal highness, and bags to carry 
sugar plums to her grace the duchess. I could wish 
indeed that the Legislature and the Attorney-general 
and the Lord Chief Justice would compel them to do 
me justice, by giving me as much cheese and cloth 
for my paper today as they did yesterday : else, if 
they continue rising in their demands at this rate, 
while I am so fixed down that I cannot rise with 
them, I fear that I shall soon have neither coat to 
my back nor morsel of cheese to my mouth ; though, 
perhaps, indeed they are in all this consulting my ease 
and interest, and it is their gracious purpose to make 
me do like Hannah More, without either food, rai- 
ment, or hard labour, by lying quietly abed for ever . 

But the Cases are the case in hand, and we can 
write about thern though we have no gold to put in 
them. 

The Roman outnumbers even the rich Grecian in 
cases, and greatly outdoes him as a general in the art 
of manoeuvring his army; for, while the invincible 



95 

Grecian adhered to the phalanx, t he Roman, like 
Proteu s, could take any shape. Now he comes down 
upon the foe in solid columns, now in straight ex- 
tended line, now with the swift and mighty wings of 
an eagle, or the circling horns of the moon, encom- 
passeth him round ; or he divideth his forces into 
separate bands, intermingling horsemen and footmen, 
the archers with the slingers and spearmen, and the 
legions of honour are mingled through all the camp. 

It is only however in cases and involution that the 
Roman is superior to the Grecian : in every other re- 
spect he is much inferior. He is a little Pharaoh, that 
can show little pyramids and little labyrinths. The 
Grecian is a great Pharaoh, who can boast great pyra- 
mids, whose summits are lost in the clouds, and 
whose centre is dark as midnight : and his labyrinths 
are more intricate than the wilderness of Sinai or the 
deserts of Africa, where you find no end, in wander- 
ing mazes lost ; and where ten thousand have perished 
through fatigue and want, for one that ever reached the 
land of rest and plenty. 

The Roman is much inferior to the Grecian, too, in 
the colour and quality of his raiment. It is not so 
showy to the eye, nor so soft and smooth to the touch ; 
and in every respect there is more of Gothic stuff in it ; 
so that, notwithstanding his hatred and contempt of 
the barbarians, it is evident that he received no small 
kindness from them, being indebted to them for the 
materials, if not for the workmanship, of his toga and 
tunica. 

The greater smoothness and intricacy (except in in- 
volution) in Greek than in Latin are two facts that 



26 

can never be accounted for on the supposition that 
Rome owed ail to Greece; especially when it is con- 
sidered that Roman youth was taught not only the 
Greek but the La tin itself by Grecian masters . A 
servile race of imitators (as all Roman writers were, 
as much as their college admirers) might boast them- 
selves a stem or a sucker from the stock of Graecia 
itself, the graft of a strange and degenerate vine ; but 
there is abundant evidence that their root and stock, 
whatever foreign and motley grafts they may have re- 
ceived, clipped into fantastic unnatural shape, never 
grew in any classic garden, whether Grecian or Egyp- 
tian. Latin neither grew up as a mushroom in La- 
tium, nor was brought a sickly sapling from Graecia ; 
it grew with the wide-spreading palm-tree and hardy 
oak, and therefore it has still much of the nature of 
the oak (its best quality), notwithstanding all the prun- 
ings and clippings of finical fingers. 

The tendency and actual process of all language 
among all people is not from being intricate to become 
simple, and from being smooth to become harsh ; but 
from simplicity to intricacy, and from harshness to 
smoothness. This is the process of music, instru- 
ments, machinery, and every thing where art is any 
w 7 ay concerned. Rudeness and simplicity, smooth- 
ness and intricacy, are respectively twin sisters. 

The savage has mouth and ears as well as the phi- 
losopher, which have their likings and dislikings, and 
the same kind of likings and dislikings too ; for he is 
fond of ease and music, and would prefer an utter- 
ance easy and soft to the mouth and sweet and plea- 
sant to the ear, to one difficult and harsh, as much 



27 

as he would prefer sucking a grape to biting an 
acorn. 

Once teach him to unite euphony and meaning ; to 
study sound as much as sense ; only set him agoing, 
and he will run fast enough, and pipe and sing and 
dance allegro in the same course of softening refine- 
ments of speech as Greece, Italy, and France. His 
ear becomes nice and dainty, and his mouth becomes 
more and more averse to hard labour. He will never 
move an organ when mere breathing will serve his 
purpose, nor use his teeth when he can substitute the 
lip, nor the throat (for all gutturals are difficult) if he 
can substitute lip, tongue, teeth, nose, or breath. He 
will never form a single consonant where he can be 
understood by breathing a vowel ; he will not take the 
time or the trouble to utter a difficult or harsh con- 
sonant where he can change it into a smooth one, or 
into a vowel. He will rather hiss like a serpent than 
open his mouth ; and snivel through his nose, as if spec- 
tacle-bestrid, like a Frenchman, than exert his teeth. 

This it were folly in me to parade forth as a new 
theory, or new discovery. The fact is as old as the 
use of speech, and is one which lies on the very sur- 
face of language, and of which any man may con- 
vince himself by studying his own mouth and ears ; 
when he will perceive that, if he never saw it before, 
the only reason was that he had never looked for it. 
He will easily perceive, too, why living languages are 
ever changing in pronunciation (and in spelling too, 
unless some standard dictionary prevent it) ; why 
they change uniformly from harshness to smoothness ; 
why those that were hard and rough as a barbarian 



28 



in the vigour of youth become soft and flexible as a 
dancing-master, or master of the ceremonies, or groom 
of the bed-chamber, in the infirmity and dotage of old 



age. 



Thus the present language of Italy is much smooth- 
er than the former, and that too in spite of the rugged 
guttural barbarians who came in like a flood upon 
the classic vineyard. These barbarians did not make 
the classic gentlemen rough, but said gentlemen made 
the barbarians smooth ; for that they could do for 
them, if they could do nothing else. Though they had 
no mind or soul to put in their new neighbours, 
they could teach them to shave off the shaggy hair 
from their person ; and this is a kind of instruction in 
which barbarians have ever been more apt scholars 
than any other. I would not give a penny to see a 
black fiddler, bass-drum beater, hair-dresser, or gen- 
tleman s companion, as polite as the prince : but I 
would give a guinea, I mean a paper one, to see and 
hear a black philosopher — I mean not, however, such 
an one as is often called philosopher — for I would as 
soon give twopence to see Punch as him, if he were as 
black as the devil, or as white as an angel. 

As the modern is much smoother than the ancient 
Latin (which is only saying that Latin grown old is 
much smoother than when it was young) ; so French is 
exceedingly smooth notwithstanding its Gothic-Latin 
origin. The Frenchman will pour melody into your 
ear, while he is pouring a deep stream of meaning 
into your soul ; nor will he gape ungracefully like a 
Goth, or use that vulgar thing called the gullet, 
which gobbles up frogs and mice, and all manner of 



29 

crawling and creeping things : this would be quite 
ungenteel : — he will give you the true Parisian accent, 
perfumed with the odour of true Paris piping hot 
from his own nostrils, well charged with true Paris, 
out of his own box, which was filled at his own shop, 
kept by his own friend Monsieur. For as the French- 
man's palate is the only true standard of taste in all 
the world, so his nose is the only true musical pipe 
for singing the response of true conversation ; and 
therefore, as Madame de Stael has well proved, the 
French are the only people in the world who know 
how to converse ; especially about fiddlers and dan- 
cing-masters, barbers and tailors, kitchens and sta- 
bles, ladies and petticoats, frogs and mice,and all that 
is deep and profound, high and lofty. 

The fact we have stated w r ould, if well considered, 
cure authors of their sick-brain theories (if indeed 
they be curable) respecting vowels and consonants, 
the origin and progress of language, its defects and 
excellencies, etymology, and a number of other things, 
on which they have written so largely, as if on pur- 
pose to compel us to exclaim, vanity of vanity, allis 
vanity and vexation of spirit. 

Musical instruments improve in sweetness of tone 
by becoming older, and by being much used. The 
same is true of language ; and though properly an in- 
strument of thought, it slides insensibly into an in- 
strument of music ; and, from being a rude instru- 
ment of music, is apt to receive all the refinements 
of the musical art, till the voice of reason is 
drowned in the noise of harmony ; the interpreter of 
intellect becoming a piping musician, to sooth the 
sickly ear of pampered luxury. 



80 

As for persons of refined taste, who think language, 
like Italian music, good only as a cordial for soft 
ears, or to amuse and beguile long winter nights, that 
understanding and true fancy, and all that deserves 
the name of mind and soul, may be lulled to repose 
as by the sound of an iEolian harp ; let them enjoy 
their own taste, and have their music ; let their soul 
take it easy, and be sung to repose in whatever way 
they choose. 

If the tinkling of bells make the poor beast of bur- 
den easier under the load, surely give him bells. I 
w'ould contribute towards them as freely, and liberally, 
as if a charity sermon was preached for the purpose, 
by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, High 
Primate of all England. Let our poor fellow mortal 
in this vale of tears have his lordship's grace, and 
my compassion. Let those who are weary and heavy 
laden with oppression have the cordial of music to 
cheer their fainting spirit. Let them have rhimes 
and harmony, whether of bells, or the voice or pipe of 
man. Let the ploughboy whistle as he turns the- fur- 
row, and the waggoner sing, or talk in cheering notes, 
as he guides the team. 

I object not to sweet sound ; I only object to 
making a fiddle of language, and to having any word 
or syllable in it, that has merely the nature of the fid- 
dle — were it as small as the finest hair in the bow- 
string. 

The business of language is to convey thought ; the 
business of a fiddle is to make music ; the business 
of music is to charm the ear, and through the ear to 
affect the passions; though the music in vogue never 
goes so far in me, but runs off the ear as water from 



31 

an oil cloth. It may go to the centre of a musician, 
because he is all art, outward, and inward, as much 
as a watch is; for, as the hands on the dial plate are 
moved by the wheels within, so you may move all the 
within by turning the hands on the dial 
plate. 

As the business of language is to convey thought, 
it speaks not to the ear exclusively, but to the eye 
also (as well as other senses, if necessity compel) ; 
and it spoke to the eye before it spoke to the ear ; 
for the language of signs was before the language of 
sounds. The language of signs is the language f 

■CO O O o 

nature, (I mean rational nature,) and therefore univer- 
sal, and the only universal language ; and by means 
of this alone could two men understand each other, 
when brought together from widely distant ends of 
the earth, the one from the arctic and the other from 
the antarctic circle. 

The tongue, though now almost exclusively the only 
instrument of intelligence, was the last member in the 
human body used for that purpose ; and the ear was 
pleased with sound before it understood meaning. 
The language of persons born deaf and dumb was 
before the language of those born blind. Hence lan- 
guage is as distinct from music, as the eye is from 
the ear; and hence also every word, syllable, or 
letter in language, that serves not to convey thought, 
but only to produce euphony, is a musical note out of 
place. It is Orpheus invading the province of Mer- 
cury ; and how guilty he was of such usurpation, 
first in Greece, and afterwards in all Europe, espe- 



32 

cially in Italy and France, is abundantly manifest ; 
whose musical inhabitants have been willing to defraud 
their minds to endow their ears, being content with 
less of intelligence for the sake of having more of 
music ; and we, as if fallen from our high estate into 
apes of apes, are in a hurry to pipe and dance after 
them. 

We want not a band of musicians to refine our 
language, such as singsong poets, shallow gramma- 
rians, mincing lords and ladies, and servile courtiers, 
who must needs lead the dance because they are in 
high place, and live at the west end of the town, 
and inherit titles and ignorance and vanity and 
disease and vice from their ancestors. From such 
leaders, good Lord, deliver us ! And if they must hold 
by the pigtail of any monkey-looking foreigner, and 
dangle at his monkeyship's heels, let not my country- 
men go after them. The less you strain your neck, 
and whirl your brain, with looking up to such apes 
and apish tricks, the better; and if they are perched 
on high like monkeys on a branch, or goats on a rock, 
be you content to stand erect upon the earth and 
rather laugh them to scorn than climb or creep after 
them. 

Rather than hurry or help on euphonic refinements, 
we have much more need of a band of anti-musical 
men to watch and awe the motions of euphony ; for, 
with all due care, we shall too soon have nothing but 
soft words in our lips and musical notes in our ear ; 
and, like our neighbours in France and Italy and 
Greece, our mouth will but too soon be as shv of con- 



33 

sonants as if they were thistles ; loving only vowels 
and diphthongs, and such letters as serve moreforsound 
than sense. 

Oh ! but Ave may have good sense lapped up in plea- 
sant sound — our understanding being instructed while 
our ears are ravished ; — as at church we have the 
heavenly doctrine of the parson, and the divine melody 
of the organ. Yes, yes ; but there is ever a kind of 
rivalship between Organum and Parsonus ; and Orga- 
num leads the audience captive by the ears much 
oftener than Parsonus leads them captive* by the un- 
derstanding or affections either. Parsonus is suffered 
(I mean on this side the Tweed) for the sake of Or- 
ganum, not Organum for the sake of Parsonus. One 
of your own poets, as musical as yourself, will tell 
you that folks to church repair, not for the doctrine 
but the music there. But he hath written also that 
the sound may be aji echo to the sense. Yes : and 
no doubt the poet himself, being a man of infinite 
art, knew well how to make sound say after sense, 
like the clerk after the priest : but whenever it is so, 
the last will be Jirslt, and the clerk greater than the 
priest, even as the god to whom he gives praise and 
glory ; for Echo is so enchanting, no wonder he was 
deified. Men listen with a kind of sacred adoration 
to the voice of Echo ; and that the ear may catch 
the sound, they are willing to let the sense escape. 

Euphony and meaning can no more have the same 
supreme regard in language than God the Father and 
God the Son in the Trinity; and the one is degraded 
exactly in proportion as the other is exalted. From 
the moment that language is set to music, it is as dis- 

D 



34 

respectfully treated as the meanest slave that licks 
the feet of a prince ; and there is as much regard paid 
to the meaning of Goosy Goosy Gander as God 
save the King ; and, what is more, the meaning is as 
seldom and as little perceived by the mind, as the 
words are by the ear from the gaping mouth of a 
long-winded, long-whining Italian songster. 

If, therefore, Poetry and Music be twin sisters ; if 
all true poetry be song ; give it over to the musical 
Doctors for dissection, as entirely their patient, which 
they may amputate, wound, heal, kill and make alive 
at pleasure. 

It is observable, that a passion for refinements in 
music and for smoothness of language have ever gone 
together — as in Greece, Italy, France, and with regret 
I add England, Our good old writers, who used lan- 
guage not as an instrument of music, but of thought, 
are too rugged, like barbarians in the days of old, for 
our refined taste. Their words are daggers in our 
ears ; but those of their successors (would that they 
had succeeded to their native genius, manly freedom, 
and vigour !) are softer than water, smoother than oil, 
and sweeter than honey from the comb. Now we 
must have solid food made soft to the mouth, or suck 
the smooth breast of harmonv, or drink the caudle of 
words mixed up without meaning, all the days of our 
life. The candidate for public approbation must be a 
prophet Ezekiel; — as a very lovely song of one that hath 
a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument; 
for readers of books, like auditors in the theatre, are 
ever calling for music, and he who sings sweetly is 
sure to be encored. No matter what the song be ; a 



$6 

talc of love, a tale of hate, a tale of woes, a tale of 
wonders, or a tale of nothing; ladies and lakes, or 
women and wash-tubs, serve the purpose equally well. 

It must, I conceive, have been some notions of 
harmony that led Latin writers to such involved ar- 
rangement of words in a sentence. This supposition 
as at least probable, seeing that some kind of musical 
pipe or instrument was used by Cicero, or by his ser- 
vant, to keep him in tune, when delivering his ora- 
tions; and seeing that the inverted arrangement of 
our blank verse, and of the style of Johnson, resemble 
so much the Latin arrangement ; which arrangement 
of Johnson and others evidently proceeded from some 
notion of harmony, as much as a song is made to a 
tune; The words were not only set to music, but the 
style was actually made to a tune ; and, as must often 
happen with the tune-composing race, you have often 
the music in greatest perfection where there is least of 
meaning, or no meaning at all ;. for the ear is so 
handsomely bribed, as to trick and cheat the under- 
standing* And we constrain ourselves to believe that 
there must be much meaning where there is not even 
the simpering of a baby. 

But whither have we wandered, and where and 
what is the text ? O ! I remember now : it is the 
first verse of the New Testament which speaketh 
and commandeth thus : "A verb must agree with its 
nominative case in number and person." And, though 
I do not so much like verbal criticism as to write a 
large commentary, with numerous notes, forming to- 
gether as venerable a whole as his Doctorshijis wig, 
curls and all, yet I think I have fully proved the 

D2 



36 

text to be spurious ; destitute of every claim to partial 
or plenary inspiration. Reason always confirms his 
revelation by argument; and argument is the only 
test whereby you are to try all rules, whether they be 
of wisdom or folly ; for many false and foolish rules 
are gone forth into the world. 

I love the large sweep of the naked eye better than 
poring all day long through a microscope ; but this 
was not the only reason of taking so wide a range from 
the central point of our grammatical discussion. I 
wished to give the reader some time for reflexion, 
and to have a second conference with him, to discuss 
the first article of the established creed ; for I would 
not gain his persuasion by surprise, knowing that it 
might be as speedily lost again as it had been ob- 
tained. 

We have seen that est and eth (often softened 
into s,) the only personal terminations of the English 
verb, are not English terminations ; that they are idle 
supernumeraries from abroad, whence so many idle 
and mischievous gentlemen come among us ; that they 
are pig tails, taken from the neck of Mr. Italian, and 
clumsily tied behind the good plain old Englishman, 
who is encumbered and made ridiculous by such ap- 
pendages: as his Princeship and his servants, with 
their frogs and their horse-hair and coat of many co- 
lours, and tassels and cords about them, as if they 
were going to dance tight rope and slack wire, or show 
wild beasts, or themselves in the shape of monkeys ; 
or were going to be hung up by neck, or heels, or 
middle, or tail, as the fancy and hands of men should 
think proper. All this is very good, in idle and empty 



57 

gentlemen ; and very generous of them too ; for since 
they cannot make themselves useful, they are oblig- 
ingly willing to make themselves laughable, like Mr. 
Coates, coming on the stage to divert the audience, as 
monkey is made to wear red coat, and handle knife 
and fork. 

Language however, is for use, not for show ; it pos- 
sessed inherent worth, and is not obliged to have re- 
course to such mummery as the merry Andrew's coat 
to look sprightly ; or the Doctors wig, to look grave 
and solemn, or to cover a shallow pate ; or long robes 
to hide a multitude of sins, and to cloke ignorance 
hypocrisy and rapacity. 

True language is like true beauty, w 7 hen unadorned 
adorned the most; and if it possessed sensation as 
well as intelligence, it would kick off with scorn every 
patch, tassel, and tail, which petty pedantry and 
mawkish affectation put upon it. And if we treat it 
kindly and justly, the only rule to be given concern- 
ing est and eth and such syllables, is to treat them 
with contempt, or get rid of them as soon as possible. 
But if we get rid of est and eth, we get rid also of the 
first rule of English Grammar ; for if learn be merely 
learn, without any change whatever to denote per- 
son and number, 7, thou, he, we, ye, they, serving 
that purpose, any rule respecting number and person 
would be as useless and absurd, as it would be to give 
a rule, saying learn must be learn, a word must be a 
word. All who spoke the English language, whether 
they had ever heard of nominative and verb, number 
and person, would put the right word in the right 



33 

place : saying, / karn, thou learn, he learn, zee learn, 
ye learn, they learn. 

Thou learn, he learn, are very awkward ! But 
are they absurd ? that is the question. I am not 
speaking to the ear of custom, but to the ear of m?- 
son. Any thing different from what we have been 
accustomed to is awkward, till we get used to it ; but 
choose that mode of speech which is the most rational, 
and custom will make it the most pleasant. Are we 
never to remove an old nuisance because the place 
would seem new and strange without it ? Must things 
evermore be as they have been, merely because they 
have been ? If determined to support corruption and 
absurdity, whether in kings, governments, laws, or 
language, merely out of respect to their gray hairs, 
say so at once, and pretend not to give a rule for right 
which is a rule for wrong. If you must approve and 
encourage the foolishness of your grandam because 
she is stricken in ears, do so ; but do not falsify lan- 
guage by calling frailty virtue, and folly wisdom. And 
do not pretend to teach young or old to think wisely 
and speak correctly, when you are blinding the eyes 
of their understanding, or persuading them they have 
none : or shedding false li^ht around them to lead 
them astray, or to fill their mind with chimerical no- 
tions, and instead of setting mind and tongue at li- 
berty, you are fettering both, as unnecessary cover- 
ings and bandages fetter the child. 

That which is called the first rule of English gram- 
mar, is the foundation on which all the other rules 
rest. If the foundation be destroyed, the supcrstruc- 



39 

ture must fall ; so that our work is already done. The 
same mistake and absurdity pervade the whole of the 
grammar, that we have already exposed. 

The second, third, and fourth rules are essentially 
the same as the first, only differently expressed after 
the usual manner of grammars; — which distinguish 
without distinction, and give to nothing the appear^ 
ance of something, and to one thing the appearance 
of many ; as if the true way of making boys carry the 
burden were to make it as large and into as many 
parcels as possible : sagely presuming, I suppose, that 
if the precious jewel of grammatical knowledge were 
put into one parcel, the careless boy would lose it by 
the way ; but that having it in many packets he is not 
likely to lose them -all. 

RULE FIFTH. 

" Pronouns must always agree with their antece- 
dents, and the nouns for which they stand, in gender, 
number, and person," &c. 

Here again I demand a reason for must. By what 
principle do you prove the propriety of the rule? 
Why is which exclusively appropriate to it, and who 
common to he and she ? Why are our earliest and 
best writers to be reproached with using improper lan- 
guage? why is the venerable style of our English trans- 
lation of sacred scripture to be censured by shallow 
upstart grammarians, who know no more of the true 
principles of language than blind men of colours ? If 
they would be foolish without insulting the wise, I 
would bear with them ; but if they must needs put 
their finical fingers about the locks and raiment of the 



40 

Great Bacon, they must learn that there is yet one left; 
who, though not equal in might, has sufficient spirit and 
strength to chastise their insolence. Let them make 
Latin and English according to rule without meanings 
and be pleased with their smooth empty workman- 
ship, as a boy with blowing eggs and putting the shells 
on a string ; but let them not presume to correct the 
language of those men whose great minds would have 
disdained their petty refinements, as the dissecting of 
a mite, or the harnessing of a flea. I can smile at 
foppery in its own province, but when foppery be- 
comes schoolmaster to wisdom, it is time to kick the 
vain thing out of the way. 

Our early writers knew that who and which were 
alike applicable to persons and things, and therefore 
applied them indifferently to either. They knew also 
that who and which were both but one and the same 
word under different forms ; and if they did wrong, it 
was in not expelling one of these forms as an useless 
supernumerary, which had no right to remain in a 
community wholly intended for usefulness. For all 
such different-form and many-form words are as great 
nuisances in language as those many form gentlemen 
in society who now appear as Mr. White, now as 
Mr. Black, now habited as My Lord, anon as his 
footman ; while, through all their changes, it is Old 
Fellow still under the name of Newman. 

And as one of the most necessary means of pre- 
venting imposture is to learn to know the same man 
under different names and habits ; so one of the most 
useful lessons in language is to learn to know the same 
word under different forms. And one of the best 



41 

services that could be done to language would be to 
take away all change of raiment from those words 
which have supernumerary garments ; for a word or 
form of a word unnecessary is not only one too much, 
and therefore a cumberer of the ground, but tends to 
hinder the business of language, as an idle hand the 
business of a factory. 

If there be a thousand synonymies in any language 
(and what language has not a thousand more), there 
are five hundred words too many ; and therefore five 
hundred faults, because five hundred hindrances to 
business ; besides much irregularity and confusion 
and mischief, such as takes place where idle people 
are kept together, as in the palace of His Princeship 
and mansion of My Lord ; — who resemble each other 
in this also — that they most abound where there is 
most luxury and voluptuousness, most ignorance and 
vanity, most imposture, falsehood, and vice-; and are 
most numerous in the corruption, old age, and de- 
cline of nations. 

But, alas, what would become of the wordy race, 
if you left but one word for one idea ! You would 
strip them naked to their shame ; you would take 
from them all their armour wherein they trust. The 
ten-minute parson would give yet shorter sermons. 
The speechifying commoner would be as often silent 
as the idlest lord on the woolsack. Mr. Quibble 
would fail to convince Mr. Client that he had his 
nearest and dearest interests at heart. And O, 
what a dearth of authors and authoresses in prose 
and verse ! The beauties of England and Wales 
would be neither said nor sung. The press would 
have a long sabbath, printers, devil, and all ; for I 



42 

question much if there would be found a single work 
of necessity or mercy to put them in motion. But 
{ respect my printer as a worthy and meritorious man, 
and hope things won't come to this extremity. Not- 
withstanding what I have just said, I would beg on 
second thought to recommend a multitude of words 
as of infinite use in covering a large surface of paper, 
and keeping the devil at work, lest he should go about 
ting- to devour us— perpetually tormenting us with 
hungry clamour. Never use one word where you can 
possibly put half a dozen : give, with free and liberal 
hand, good measure heaped up and running over. 
Don't be afraid that words will be like water spilt 
upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. 
You may throw them down and take them up again 
improved like money at usury ; for they are like but- 
tered bread, which, as the saying is, never loses any 
thing by tailing; or like an incorrect tale, which never 
loses any thing in the telling. 

And variety of expression, how charmingly it di- 
versifies style, as variety of raiment diversifies the 
man ; for he can be one day in half boots, and an- 
other day in long boots, by only putting the slip tops 
on ; and be the same man he ever was, only agree- 
ably diversified to relieve the monotonous movements 
of fife. 

Mere variety in language, without utility, is lux- 
ury ; and luxury in language is as hurtful to the un- 
derstanding as the luxuries of life are to health and 
morality. Once covet vain show and useless sound, 
and the eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear 
with hearing. 

We are told that there are hardly any two words 



43 

in any one language that have precisely the same 
meaning. That any men, with a book in their hand 
or a tongue in their mouth, should say so is only a 
proof among many others how often men write and 
speak without reflexion. For they might say with as 
good reason that there are hardly any two servants 
in any one family that are precisely servants. 

The very converse of the proposition is true ; for 
there is hardly a single idea which has not several 
words or names. But those who write before they 
think, mistake things, and then misname them. They 
mistake and misname meanings for applications of 
words. One word, having only one meaning, may 
have many applications (which being misunderstood 
for meanings, one word is said to have several mean- 
ings), and different words, having the same meaning, 
may have different applications. Choice directs the 
application — reason fixes the meaning. The parti- 
cular applications of words, by those that go before, 
become precedents for those that come after. So 
arbitrary custom and abject servility will it; and it is 
thought as much a sin to slight authority as to violate 
reason, I must apply the word as Addison and John- 
son and the other idols did, else I apply it improperly. 
It matters not that I apply it according to its mean- 
ing ; I must conform to their example, else I use it 
wrongfully; and all the children in leading-strings 
squall most vehemently, if I become bold enough to 
quit my hold. All the clerks in the Review office 
are set a searching for precedents to justify or con- 
demn the supposed offender. 

The authority of precedent sufficiently accounts, for 



44 

the fact so often observed, that the earliest writers 
are usually the greatest. Shakespear, Bacon, Taylor, 
and Barrow, had all the world of thought and lan- 
guage before them. They were free to go where they 
would, and to take what they liked. Every future 
writer had them to look to on the road before him ;. 
and therefore was less free and independent than 
they (so custom hath willed it) ; his followers were 
still less free and independent than he; and thus 
onward till originality is quite pushed out of life, and 
men are left mere copyists, like the stationary me- 
chanical Chinese, doing only over again what their 
forefathers had done before them. 

This is the reason, though not the only rea- 
son, why I resist arbitrary rules, whether of gram- 
mar or of taste. Slavery I hate in all its kinds and 
forms, and therefore raise my voice against the tyrant. 
Why must I pray in the posture of David, or sin after 
the similitude of Adam's transgression ? Leave me 
to the freedom of my own will, as he was left to his. 
And if I must be driven forth of the classic garden 
merely because I won't hold my spade, or use my 
prunning hook after the example of some great gar- 
dener who has been made flugie-man to all genera- 
tions, let me have all the world beside to range in ; 
for I would rather mingle with the sons of the field, 
amidst the endless variety of nature, than be employed 
in making walks in straight lines and at right angles • 
or in clipping yew trees and box into smooth and re- 
gular shapes, as if I were become nature's tailor and 
barber. 

Let those who cannot guide the steps of their own 



45 

feet, tread after in the footsteps of an approved leader; 
for perhaps if they did not follow him they could not 
move at all. 

Now that the world is old, Intellect has been so 
long carried on Precedent's back, that the poor feeble 
rickety thing can neither walk nor stand alone ; and 
if it do attempt to waddle after, it must hold by the 
tail of Precedent's coat; and is vain of its infirmity too, 
as a page of honour. 

As there are imitators of original models, so there 
are imitators of imitators; and the first page of 
honour has a page of honour, the second a third, and 
thus downward and onward without end, beyond observ- 
ance, like the divisibility of matter. I have amused my 
fancy with viewing the procession of pages of pages 
an endless train ; and have wished the pencil of a 
Hogarth, to put the image of my fancy on paper or 
canvas. 

Homer was seen holding the skirt of a mighty 
Egyptian. For I would as soon believe this watch 
jumped from the hand of the first watch-maker, as 
believe the Iliad or the Odyssey came from the 
tongue or pen of the first poet. Homer, however, 
looks so tall and stately, so free and bold, as to be 
easily mistaken in the mists of antiquity for the pa- 
triarch of ajl poets. His page Virgil showed, to my 
fancy, not so tall by the head, nor so free and bold ; 
for he was evidently afraid of offending his master ; 
believing too all that he said, and doing all that he 
bid. And as meanness accompanies slavishness, he 
was seen slily pilfering from his master, making his 
friends merry with Homer 's wine, which he had put 



46 

in his own bottles. And when the theft was disco- 
vered, his admirers praised the deed ; affirming that 
he had both improved the flavour of the wine, and 
presented it in a more princely manner than great 
Homer. 

But what a falling off in the Virgilian train ! It 
is well known that breeds degenerate if they be not 
crossed. Of all breeds the slavish breeds degenerate 
the most ; and of all the slavish race, the brood of 
imitators dwindle the fastest ; so that if beetles may 
grow into men; as we know perfectly well ; wits like 
cheese may grow into mites. 

Time would fail to speak of all who have the ho- 
nour of being links in the endless chain of being, 
from Virgil down to mites, and from mites downward 
far out of sight of microscopes. For many of these 
invisible beings may be actually treading me under 
foot, boasting their heavenly descent from high Ho- 
mer, or making verse in the true Homerian and Vir- 
gilian strain ; or disputing in their two great univer- 
sities about measures and quantities and weights as 
fiercely as tailors and drapers, bakers and assizers ; 
and notwithstanding all my aversion to a load even 
of learning, I am perhaps doomed to carry colleges 
and collegians, books, mouldering stones, rusty me- 
tals, rotten bones, Egyptian mummies, and whatever 
they have pleased to collect from Egypt, Greece, and 
Italy, and heap upon a poor mortal all weary and 
heavy laden. And perhaps, those depressions I some- 
times feel, are caused by the pressure of extraordina- 
ry assemblies in college, when all the learned body have 
left Newmarket for the senate-house, to choose a 



47 

Chancellor, or to vote an address to King, Lords, and 
Commons, praying them to support Church and State 
by burning all heretics and seditious persons ; and to 
promote the truly Christian object of human destruc- 
tion and misery by a vigorous prosecution of the war. 
What makes it the more probable that collegians do 
press upon me is, that my depressions are most se- 
vere, and most frequent, in that season of the year, 
when gentleman are with Alma Mater ; and no soon- 
er do thev throw off their rowns, and run into the 
country, than I feel so light, that I could run after 
them if I liked them for company. Let me hope 
however, that some of the choicer excellencies of Ho- 
mer and Virgil may fall through their fingers, and 
dwell in my cranium for ever ; for to have one's head 
in a college all one's lifetime in company with Homer 
and Virgil and learn nothing, is as miserable a fate 
as that of classic Tantalus, and metaphysical ass. 

Lest however, we strain the neck, or whirl the brain 
of fancy, in looking too long to the invisible descen- 
dants of the great poet, let us turn to those who are 
yet large enough to full within the apprehension of the 
senses. 

Tw r o were seen as rallying posts, and divine models 
to all wits. The name of the one was Ease, that of 
the other was Strength. Ease was elder brother ; and 
therefore held the public esteem by the right of pri- 
mogeniture and preoccupancy ; and many were pre 
possessed in his favour. One spoke of his simplicity 
to which all must be converted before they can enter 
the kingdom of true taste ; for the word taste was so 
often up, that you would have suspected something of 



48 

French cookery concerned. And his Doctor skip 
arching nostrils, and eye-brows, would pity the poor 
rough spun palate of ploughman, which could not 
taste the exquisite relish of Easy's delicate cookery. 
His simplicity all praised as native, though not native 
as naivete is in France, or as simplicity in the child. 
Some spoke highly of his elegance, some of his name- 
less charms, and pure chastity, and careless felicities, 
and happy graces; some of his smoothness and har- 
mony, others of his Attic salt. 

It was generally agreed, that he should be worship- 
ped duly, evening and morning ; or rather that the 
whole of time, comprehending days and nights, were 
to be given to him as a true and proper divinity ; and 
that all who would ascend high without falling to the 
ground, and remain low without sinking in the mire, 
and have a taste neither too sweet nor too sour, and a 
manner neither too French-like, nor too Dutch-like, 
must be imitators of him as dear worshippers ; thinking 
as he thought, and speaking as he spoke ; being cor- 
rect, as he was correct, easy as he was easy, chaste as 
he was chaste, elegant as he was elegant ; and what- 
ever he was they were to be, and nothing else what^ 
ever ; so that being transformed into his image, they 
might be simple, tasteful, pure, correct, chaste, elegant, 
neat, handsome, easy, graceful, trim, prim, spiced some- 
where with Attick salt or pepper, all divine and wor- 
thy the Augustan age. 

It was agreed that such a Divinity ought not only 
to be worshipped, but to have a high priest ; and all 
eyes were turned to Doctor Frank as being the freest 
and easiest model of the God ; and indeed he was 



49 

worthy of higher honour, and might himself have been 
Deified, had he not bowed with the multitude at the 
shrine of the idol ; for he had much of the Divinity 
of nature stirring within him, and dared as a God to 
contend with the thunder of Jupiter. 

But lo the altars of the great idol are almost de- 
serted ; and as new pope turneth the old into here- 
tic, so the new classic leader causeth the old to be for- 
saken, drawing the whole world after him ; showing 
large and high as a tower of strength among the 
feeble folks that danced around. And much they 
gazed, and much they w r ondered, as if the world had 
seen a prodigy. And as the Philistines with Samp- 
son all Avere eager to find w T here his great strength 

Some would have it to lie in altitudinal height, lon- 
gitudinal length, and latitudinal width. Others in 
amplitude, crassitude, and spissitude. Some in den- 
sity, others in rotundity ; and much they peeped 
about and through the feet of Colossus. Now point- 
ing to the Herculean stature, now to the width of the 
stride which placed the enormous mass on the true 
centre of gravity. They talked of weight and mea- 
sure and quantity, as if they had been in the Uni- 
versity measuring corn for Homer's horses ; or the 
length of tail allowed for handle to his page Virgil. 
They spoke of antithesis and point, as if they were 
going to become antagonists to Sampson, and pierce 
him to the heart with his own spear. Their tongues 
were so divided and confounded, you would have 
supposed the old builders returned, to pull down the 
work of their own hands, the high tower of Babel. 

E 



An opinion at last prevailed, that the great strength, 
of Hercules must lie in the visual orb of perspicacity. 
Nor is this wonderful, seeing the visual orb has been 
always mighty to witch and to bewitch ; to flush the 
cheek with health and beauty ; and to wither the giant 
into a dwarf — to blast the fruits of the earth, or to 
fill the garner with all manner of stores — to wound 
and to heal — to kill and to make alive — to break the 
heart of a rival, and to revive the soul of a despairing 
lover. 

Hence of old to destroy the giants' power, they 
destroyed their visual orb, as the Philistians that of 
Sampson and Ulysses that of Polyphemus ; for we 
must put up with that old miserable hack, classic al- 
lusion when he comes in our way ; though we would 
rather mount a colt even if an ass colt on which never 
man sat, than any polluted beast that has carried fools 
from College to Newmarket, and knaves to Newgate, 
or any other nexv place or old place ; Newgate being 
their own proper place. 

But classic is true blood, and therefore every college 
gentleman is determined to bestride him, while a 
drop of blood remains ; and after the last drop has 
distilled at broken knees, and torn sides, and galled 
back ; for he is the same flesh still, only separated 
from the blood, as if duly prepared for mouth of Jew ; 
and though nothing remains but a carcase, the beast 
is as fit for college exercises as ever. It would endanger 
young Lord's, Squire's, or Reverend's neck, to put 
him on a spirited colt not well broken in ; rather than 
risk which (for his life is too valuable to be thrown 
over any beast's head, or heels,) he must be put on a 



61 

hack fairly broken down ; for when dear little master 
will ride, we must put him on a hobby. And every 
college sliding place itches to feel a VirgUian saddle, 
as that of cobbler to press the throne of his majesty, 
which duly seated on, having bought it as others do 
the seats around the throne ; now King Crispin is a 
King indeed, sitting on the throne of the realm. 

And now he revolves in deep thought whom he shall 
call to his council, whom he shall make private secre- 
tary, that himself may have time to drink brandy; — 
whom he shall send to the Indies for gold — how he 
shall best divorce old Kate — what neighbour's wife he 
shall take for Quean to his high embrace — for now 
he can transgress neither law of God nor man, see- 
ing that he sitteth high above all law, which was 
only made for the slaves at his feet. Now in his high 
estate he can do no harm ; for were he to wallow as, 
a soHv in the mire, or to return to his polluted enjoy- 
ments as a dog to his own vomit, he is all pure as an 
angel ; and vice is no longer vice, when cobbler is no 
longer cobbler, but high King Crispin. 

Thus is his head filled with kingly notions, as if he 
were lunatic in Bedlam ; but lo the sot is the sot still, 
whatever you put upon his head ; and Crispin feeling 
his pockets, leaves the throne for the brandy shop. 

As Crispin is vain of royalty, so is collegian of all 
that is classic. Only show him a steed of Virgil's 
stud, that came out of Homer's stable, and he will 
become page of honour to the horse if he cannot hold 
by the tail of his master. Nay, show him a straw or 
stubble or particle of dung that came out of Homer's 
stable, and he will beg a hair of it for memory, .and 

E '"2 



52 

dying mention it in his will, as a precious bequest to 
Alma Mater, to be worn in her breast pin, or hung 
for an ornament of grace about her neck, or that of 
her sweet scented smelling bottle, filled with essences 
extracted from the heart and liver and rotten bones of 
the classic dead. 

But we must return to our modern classic Hercules. 
No sooner was it surmised that his great strength lay 
in the visual orb of perspicacity, than lo a thousand 
hands were up, not to put virtue in, as kings touch 
rough faces and bishops' empty heads, but to take 
the strength out, as the Philistines dug out the visual 
orb of Sampson, and Ulysses that of Polyphemus. 
When lo it is found that Sampson is a giant still, and 
as mighty when blind as when he saw ; and by one 
touch of his powerful hands, could pull down the firm- 
est pillars in the temple of language, burying the wor- 
shippers of Dagon in the ruins. 

Some however escaped from the general destruc- 
tion, and were seen running back to the old idols ; 
especially to Virgil, boasting themselves of his prince- 
ly household, and clamourously soliciting me to go 
with them. To whom my haughty spirit made this 
reply. If you have the honour to be private secreta- 
ry, master of the ceremonies, page of honour, fool 
of quality, butler, footman, or scullion to his royal 
highness, keep your place and be proud of your of- 
fice. If you swear, let it be by the life of Pharoah, 
and in the accent of Pharoah. If you eat, drink, 
speak, bow, sit, stand, lie, let it be in your gracious 
master's manner ; let your coat be cut by the measure 
of that which has the honour of lying with his prince- 



53 

ship when he is kicked from the couch to the carpet 
of his neighbour's wife ; and which was chalked and 
clipped with his own princely hands. Let your snufT 
be prince's mixture, your wines and brandy, your 
sauces and gravies, and all your meats and drinks be 
prince's mixture ; that eating what he eats, and drink- 
ing what he drinks, — for we know that the meat and 
drink become the very solids and fluids, the very flesh 
and blood of the man ; therefore it is not correct to 
say God made him out of dust ; for he manufactures 
himself with his own mill of jaw bones, out of such 
materials as beasts, and birds, and fishes, and creeping 
things. And this is that which is commonly called 
transmigration, or the passing of one animal into the 
shape of another; as a sparrow into miss Chatter, 
and a peacock into miss Vainshow; the masculine 
transmuting in transmigrating into the feminine gender. 
Or the noun may be of the doubtful gender ; or per- 
haps of both genders : Venus in the ball room, and 
Adonis on the saddle. Madame Italini is plainly of 
the thrush, and is well kept because she has a squal- 
ling throat ; while flocks of red-breasts, and black- 
birds, and jays, and magpies, and ravens are flying 
around, snatching a hungry morsel as they can, threat- 
ening to bore our ears, and pick our eyes and pockets. 
The pursuit of squire Hunt doth plainly show that 
whence he came thither he goeth ; and that being 
made out of venison, he loves to be with his relations 
of the chase. Jack is amphibious ; fit for either land 
or water, which proves him related to Admiral Drake. 
And no sooner was our duckling disentangled from 
the shell, than off he waddled to sea, poor mother 



51 

then, looking piteously after, waiting in sorrow the 
water chick's return. 

Sir Alderman Paunch, has made himself of turtle ; 
and when thrown on his back at city election, there 
he lays without never no poxver to rise ; — turtle-eyed 
abdomen immovably fixed upon zenith as astrono- 
mer royal. 
, /^j The race of imitators make themselves out of old 

mity cheese, which easily accounts for their becom- 
ing mites ; for beings are doomed to return to their 
first estate ; and as it was said to man, dust thou art 
and to dust thou shalt return ; so to the old-cheese- 
made race it may be truly said, mites thou art and to 
mites shalt thou return. 
^^ The whole race of book-worms are what they ever 
were, without begetting, or making, or transmigrating, 
or transmuting in any shape ; for it is well known, that 
worms breed without any creation or generation work 
whatever ; and though they have their teeth at work 
day and night, they cannot fatten themselves into al- 
dermen, or raise themselves in the scale of being ; for 
they would seem comprehended in the curse upon the 
serpent, on thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou 
y ^^^eat all the days of thy life. 

It is well known that spiders are rare dainties to 
certain fine-spun palates. And it is evident that Dr. 
Metaphysical is of the spider creation ; for his whole 
employ is to sit in the center pfjvacuum and spin a fine 
web out of the_ fibres of his own empty brain, with 
which he e ntangles an d catches se nsible imag es, then 
chews and di gests them do wn, soul body and spirit, in- 
to pure abstraction. For he is as great an enemy 



/^ 



fr*i* 



55 

to c oncretes as spiders a rejg flies, and cats are to 
mice. 

Lawyer quibble is a haw k, ev er flying about s eek—^^^y ^ 
ing whom he may d evour. See how keen his eye to 
spy a fat fee — how sharp his beak to peck the eye s of 
truth out of a witness — and how sharp his claws, to 
tear c lient's poc kets or pounce upon his purse. 

As for Lord Precedent he is the boar complete, ufat^^*/' 
only become uglier and more voracious by becoming 
older ; and if he attain the age of Methuselah, woe 
be to the world in those days ; for his eye will not 
pity, neither will his tusks spare. 

Who can think of the stagnant marshes, and cor- 
rupt places of the earth, without seeing the crawlings 
and hearing the croakings of Frenchmen's food, which 
supplies a numerous race of supplejointed courtiers ; 
for the sore plague of frogs and crawling vermin upon 
Pharoah and all his palace was nothing but a general 
return of his courtiers to their first estate ; and though 
he admired them standing erect, as Eve did the ser-) 
pent, he abhorred them in their true reptile form. 
And he was willing to let the bondmen go free to get 
rid of his courtiers. Nay, he who so often shut his ear 
and hardened his heart to the groan of their op- 
pression, now became petitioner ; praying them to * 
take his courtiers out of his sight, and from his palace, f 
from his banquetting hall, and bed-chambers, and 
kitchen, and tables, and couches ; for his grooms of 
the bed-chamber, the masters of horse and ceremo- 
nies, his ministers of state and private secretaries, had 
become too numerous and too filthy for him, crawling 
and croaking, and spawning, and fouling every where> 



56 

having become so bold, by long precedent and prac- 
tice, as to have no sense of shame about them ; one 
of their crown law yers affirming, in the midst of their 
honmirablejody, th at their foul deeds were glo rious 
as the no on-day sun ; another cursing all to he ll that 
dared to sp eak truth against the m that might tend in 
any way what ever to hurt their rep utation, or remove 
them from office. Thus, they croaked and crawle d 
and spawiiedj 1 ndjbuled, till their fjlthiness actually 
caused pestilence, fami ne, disease, and death ? in all 
the land of Egypt, and the residue of the people 
could be only saved aliv e by cleansing out the po nds 
about the court, and the palace itself j jecame more 
filthy th an a hogsty. 

His empty lordship, dukeship, or princeship, show- 
eth plainly the goose or the gander ; and that not 
satisfied with his old goose shape an d gander ship h e 
was determined to be high born as w 7 ell as high fed 
and high bred, and to stand six feet high in the scale 
of being ; and when he is tired of this high dignity, 
he can make himself, or eat and drink himself, into 
something yet higher — as it is well known that Ro- 
man emperors, disdaining to be men, made them- 
selves gods, who may be busy at this moment making 
themselves into beings far above gods, and far above 
our sight and comprehension— far beyond reach of 
astronomical tubes ; art being able to do nothing for 
nature : or rather our slow creeping art is left behind 
their swift art pinioned to fly at infinite, as a Virgilian 
eagle surmounts a domestic goose, or a Homer i an 
greyhound out runs a garden snail. 

Seeing then, O thou great and original and skilful 



57 

man of imitation, that thou hast the evidence of trans- 
migration before thine eyes ; and seeing thou art an 
honourable member of the royal institution of art, of 
which Prince Elegant or Pr ince Virgil i s the patron 
as well as the model of perfection ; and seeing that 
thou hast the same tools and materials to work with, 
set thy wits, and hands, and eyes, and ears, and mouth, 
and all thou hast, to work, and make thyself not only 
into his image, but into his very substance, that ye 
may not only be his, but truly and properly himself, 
soul, body, and spirit, one- person for ever ; — but 
know for ail this, self created as thou art, if thou be- 
come tyrant over me, commanding me to make my- 
self in thy likeness or that of thy master, I will de- 
ride thy folly or chastise thy insolence : nor will all 
the servants of thy household, in scarlet red, and silken 
black, in flowing robes and towering wigs, awe me 
into submission. 

You say this is bold and violent language. Yes, 
freedom inspires boldness, and boldness rouzed is 
violence. When wer e freemen cowards or bondmen 
brave ? I w r ould as soon look for manly independence 
in a shoal of minows as in a c rowd of minions . Your 
a bject race , collecte d abo ut the royal gate for alms 
or admitted into the banqueting hall, may feast to the 
full, praise the s plendour of the fete, and adore the 
munificent princ e Virgi l ; but let me tell you, after all, 
your master is a slave, and I would as soon become 
the ape of an ape as the slave of a slave, whether he 
had the honour ot being slave to L ord Homer or Lord 
Caesar, or Ca3sar had the honour of being slave to 
his own lordly passions. 



58 

Had I indeed a waxen frame, a plastic face, a 
pliant mind, supple joints, and oily tongue, I might 
be tempted to stand before the divine models, or take 
lessons of Lord Chesterfield, dancing master royal, to 
learn to bow politely to precedent, and to speak 
fawning and feigned speech to tyrant fashion ; but as 
my mind and its faculties, my body and its members, 
are all set so awry that no bending and twisting can 
ever bring them to the divine models of inimitable per- 
fection, my only hope of success is in victory over 
them ; and the combatant never contends so resolutely 
as when there is no hope of quarter. My motto is, con- 
quer or die. Food without a chain or let me perish of 
hunger. Chains and yokes anj^enclosures are fit for 
beasts not for me n ; and if ass-master get upon ass- 
servant, and jog along between hedges on the old 
beaten road, no objection whatever ; there will be 
freer range for those who, despising fences, love to 
f ollow the chas e. 

As I would not have my own neck in the yoke of 
bondage, so I would not put a yoke upon the neck 
of posterity; and therefore would not hand down to 
them any book of grammar, or any other book, or any 
custom or practice which makes precedent and slavish 
imitation the law of righ t : and had I twenty sons I 
would just as "soon put Solomon's Guide to Health 
into their hands as any guide to language I have ev er 
.seen. This I know is like rousing the world to arms 
against one man who knows not if he should find 
another to stand on his side. But I feel so embold- 
ened by the freedom wherewith reflexion hath made 
me free, that I would not move a toe or eyelid though 



59 

all the grammar makers and grammar masters of the 
kingdom were to come in battle array against me ; 
provided the Lord Chief Justice a nd A ttor ney-general 
and his army, belonging t o arbitrary authority , were 
kept out of the way ; nor would I use any silver spear 
or golden sword, relying entirely on my steel pincers. 
And if Magister Syntax, Dominus Prosody or Lord 
Rhetoric does not like his nose to be pinched with 
such a hard and vulgar instrument, he must keep it 
out of the way and not thrust it where it has no busi- 
ness — vainly prying into things which he hath not 
seen. 

We have again got a great way from seventh rule. 
It plainly appears however to have no foundation, and 
therefore no protection in reason. Relative pronouns 
neither express nor distinguish genders, number, or 
person ; for this good reason that any expression or 
distinction of them is unnecessary ; because the gen- 
der, number, or person, is sufficiently near and pre- 
sent to show itself. I observe, too, that not one of 
all the examples given as faulty or bad grammar, 
under this rule, is bad sense, or in any way obscures 
or misrepresents the meaning ; therefore they are all 
right : b eing go od sense they are good grammar : and 
the rule which condemns them ought itself to be con- 
demned as both needless and absurd. And whatever 
the antecedent be, I will say like our early writers, 
who or which, just as I think proper ; for if it were 
only out of spite to arbitrary ap riority, I shall glory 
in trampling on arbitrary^rules^ 

As to objects personified, I shall call them he or 
she without any ceremony ; unless, indeed, gramma- 



60 

rians shall prove to me that the sun and moon are 
truly husband and wife ; of which indeed they seem 
to give broad hints when they speak o f causing and 
giving and affecting — of receiving arid containing. 
Perhaps the sun hath endowed the moon with all his 
worldly goods, and pledged his troth that he will 
worship her with his body ; and what we sublunar ies, 
as if we were lunatics, foolishl y call eclipses may be 
nothing but husband and wife shutting the window 
shutt ers to retire to rest , 

RULE SIXTH. 

The relative is the nominative case to the verb 
when no other nominative comes between it and the 
verb : as, "The master who taught us;" "The trees 
which are planted." But when another nominative 
comes between it and the verb, the relative is governed 
by some word in its own member of the sentence : 
as, " He who preserves me to whom I owe my being, 
whose I am, and whom I. serve, is eternal." 

I say nothing of the uncertainty and unmeaningness 
of this rule. These precious qualities it shares in 
common with other rules ; and it serves very well for 
Master Tutor to crow, and Miss Tutor to cackle over 
to the younglings for a month or two. The old ones 
fancying that they are imparting something very va- 
luable when thus teaching the English language gram- 
matically ; and the young ones very proud of their 
attainments when they have learned to crow and 
cackle like master and mistress about nominatives and 
datives and accusatives. 

But after all this talk about cases, there is properly 



6l 

no case whatever to any English relativ e, except the 
genitive (for I am willing it should be called by that 
name in this place) ; and therefore a rule concerning 
dative and accusative is only a bad law to establish 
absurdity. To whom is as absurd as to who to ; for 
I am prepared to prove that the termination m in 
Latin is the very same in use and meaning as t o in 
English : and the ignorant meddlers in our language 
knew not what they were about when they borrowed 
into it Latin terminations. They might have as well 
supposed that they wanted a head because their own 
language had not caput, as have supposed it wanted 
Latin cases. 

It may be supposed, however, that m tacked to 
the tail of who, whether man or woman, is both 
useful and necessary. Let me ask then how which 
makes shift without it ? How t m is as much dative as 
accusative ? and how the servant (for the relative is 
related to the antecedent as the servant to the mas- 
ter or mistress) is better provided with cases than his 
master or mistress ? Is it according to the nature of 

o 

things that the servant should be richer than his mas- 
ter ? Or are these cases for the purpose of carrying 
his master's clean linen, who is too proud to be seen 
with a case or box about his person ! 

The truth is, without est and eth or es tackedj o 
verbs, and m tacked to pronoun s, learned clerks 
could not have given the shape or shadow of an En- 
glish gram mar. But they could not bear the thought 
that their mother tongue should be so poor and naked 
as not even to have a grammar like her high born 
sisters in Greece and Italy. And who does not know 



that many a poor language has been a reproach and 
bye word and hissing among the nations, because so 
rude and imperfect as not to have a grammar. 

Our learned clerks, full of filial tenderness for their 
mother, were desirous of taking away her reproach 
from among men ; and therefore went on holy pil- 
grimage to Home to beg a few patches for her face 
and shreds for her person, to make her look like her 
rich and elegant classic neighbours the divine models 
of all excellence. 

These patches and shreds are few in number, thanks 
to the contracted influence of early clerks and trans- 
lators and imitators of_Rome — thanks to the sturdy 
adherence to old manners on the part of the people. 

It may be thought still however that m is necessary 
to put meaning into, or pull meaning out of, who ; for 
perhaps it is a contraction of mitto or maims. Let 
us try : " He who preserves me, to who I owe my 
being, and who I serve." God preserves me, to God 
I owe my being, God I serve. I can perceive no 
difference of meaning between, " to who I owe my 
being, who I serve, 1 ' and " to God I owe my being. 
God I serve." 

You say to who, and who I serve, sound awk- 
ward. I am not speaking of sound but of meaning. 
If I were speaking to my dog, I would not use to who 
if it offended him ; for, poor fellow, he never was at 
school or college in his life. I never saw a gram- 
mar in his hand, spectacles on his nose, a gown on 
his back, or a wig on his head. I should therefore 
be as pedantic as many a doctor among women and 
children, were I to begin and dispute with him about 



€3 

cither grammar or philosophy. He might suppose 
that by to who I meant that he should go, perhaps, 
about his business ; and to whom might seem to him 
come ; for the sounds are so much alike as to be easily 
mistaken by a poor vulgar illiterate dog ; though a 
philosopher and grammarian could not possibly make 
such a mistake ; and never does make such a gross 
blunder. 

If, then, I were talking to my dog, I would have 
regard to meaning rather than sound, and would dis- 
use to xvho merely because he misunderstood the 
meaning, not that it sounded awkward to his ear. I 
will not insult you, therefore, by supposing you less 
rational man poor unphilosophical bow wow, and that 
you prick up your ears when you should use your un- 
derstanding, and set up your ears against the dictates 
of reason. The question then is not whether it shocks 
your ears or mouth or eyes, for all three may be of- 
fended at first for aught I know ; but does it shock 
your judgement ? It is not what is awkward but what 
is absurd that we ought to reject in language : I can 
perfectly conceive of some things being awkwardly 
rational, and others gracefully absurd. A courtier 
may tell falsehood fashionably, and therefore grace- 
fully : a plain honest man may tell truth bluntly and 
and unfashionably, and therefore awkwardly. To 
who, and serve who, may seem strange to you, and 
so does every thing new to us, though as old as the 
creation. But only use to who kindly and justly for 
a day or two, and you will find him a very pleasant 
companion. 

What has been said of zvho applies equally to he 



64 

and they. There is no propriety in clapping a bunch 
on their back to make them look like any great per- 
sonages that now are or ever were in Rome. If they 
merely personated qui or any other Roman, it would 
be very proper to give them a bolster behind to re- 
semble his natural protuberance, as Mr. Kean must 
have a bunch to resemble King Richard ; but as they 
are not players but real actors, and have to do more 
hard work and run more messages than any class of 
servants in the family of words, I insist on it, not as 
a matter of compassion, but of justice, that you undo 
their heavy burden ; for to oblige them to carry weight 
merely because others have done so before them, is 
as absurd as to oblige me to wear a cravat a foot deep 
because certain great personages do so. The thing 
may be useful to them, and if there is any thing about 
their throat that wants concealing, no objection to 
the cover ; for I would thank any man to put a cover 
on a cancerated nose ; but if he would make a merit of 
necessity, and while hiding deformity, lead the fashion, 
he ought to receive the reward of his vanity, in being 
treated like the fox in the fable, who advised his neigh- 
bours to cut off th eir tails. As I would not have any 
thing that naturally belongs to our language cut off 
to please the mincing imit ators of the French, so I 
would have no false^ig-taTTkept on to please the eye 
of custom. 

This, you say, may be all very rational, but it is 
not orthodox ; and there is no successful striving 
against established faith and established pra ctice. 
Whom, him, and them, are firmly fixed in our lan- 
guage, have full possession of the public ear, and 



65 

must remain. Now you are mighty and must pre- 
vail ; for if the right of possession be the only true 
right, then the prince — the prince of daemons and alljhis 
court and all his legions may enter in and dwell among 
us, and neither prayer nor fasting will cast them out; 
for as Satan never yet cast out Satan, so he never yet 
inclined his ear to the cry of the humble a nd pej jjjon 
of the o ppres sed. The temple of God may become 
a house of merchandise ; the palace may become a 
den of t hieves and robber s, or such tyrants as Nero 
and Domitian ; the senate a cage of unclean birds 
and devouring vultures ; the seat of judgement the 
throne of injustice ; public assemblies may become 
intercourses of iniquity ; the city may become a sink 
of vice, and all the land be polluted. All the foun- 
dations of good law and good government and human 
prosperity may be out of course. Judgement may be 
turned backward, and justice put afar off; truth 
made to fall in th e streets, and equity not suffered to 
enter, and he that departeth from evil render himsel f 
a prey. All these evils may come upon us, then in- 
solently boast the right of possession. And these 
daemons may first turn men into swine, then drown 
them in perdition, glorying in the deed. 

You say, Why all this waste of feeling ? Your zeal 
is without cause, and your discourse no way adapted 
to the occasion ; you were not called to speak an ora- 
tion at the grave of Virtue ; there is no just propor- 
tion between a rule of grammar and such vehement lan- 
guage. Be it so that there is no just proportion — there 
is connection between them ; for small things are con- 
nected with great ; and if grammatical rules' put up the 



66 

( same plea for having, us in bondag e that tyrants alwa ys 
have done, whether tjTjmtJsing, ty rant j unto, tyrant law , 
o p tyrant custom , the grea test tyrant of all, we must pack 
them all off together, if possible, to their own place. 

As it was, and now is, so let it evermore be ! is 
the prayer whic h tyranny has ever put into the mouth 
of slaves. The oppressed are, by the juggling of 
pries ts and courtiers, tr icked i nto_ a prayer for th e con- 
tinuance of op pression and the Inquisition ; and then 
the agents of impostur ejmd oppression, b oast that the 
people love to have it so. They, merciful men, care 
not about the Inquisition, whether it stand or fall ; 
but the people swearto hold it up , and to shed their 
blood for its dear, righte ous, and merciful sake. Mi- 
nisters of state , all soft-hearted me n, would not con- 
tinue war , but the people won't let them make peace 
— petitioning most fervently, from all parts, that as 
the war does exist, so let it be continued ; and that 
they will m ake brick with out straw, or even die by 
inches rath er than the pr esent glorious state o f things 
and constitution of these real ms should b e altere d. 

To superficial observers there appears no connec- 
tion between things which are as closely related as 
cause and effect. They resemble the dog that spends 
his fury o n the stone instead of the hand that throws 
it. How much have we heard of political bondage , 
but how little of mental bondag e! Yet the last is ever 
the elder brother, I ought to say the parent. Men 
are made s laves first in the nurser y^ then in the school , 
and the gown and the doctor finish what the nurse and 
petticoat bogan . With an abject submission t o cus - 
tonv and servile admiration of Greece and Rome, 



67 

what freedo m of mind can you expect ? How can you 
find a manly and independent public opinion in any 
country, if the very jearned men, and all that would 
be thought learned men or well educated men, are as 
really in l eading-string s as their puling babies in the 
nurseryj I am not declaiming — I appeal to facts as 
my vouchers ; and these are the system of education 

that prevails — the books that are written — and the 

I.. . . '•' - — - . . . _____ 

manner in which public opinion ^js^onnedj and e x- 
p ressed . The sys tem of education i s nothing but a 
system of mental thraldom ; and therefore, as it is now 
more perfect than it was in former times ; and as 
youth are more carefully and habitually put under the 
yoke ; the consequence, as might be expected, is, that 
they are tenfold more mentally bowed down a nd en- 
slaved than thei r forelathers. Poor mechanical be- 
ings, they can all go bj rule , march and wheel to the 
signal, or h andle their firelock to the motions of the 
f ugleman . They have a regular ed ucation, and they 
are truly trai ned bands, st anding regulars. 

In books, even standard books, how seldom do you J// 
find reasons , how often authorit ies^! The writer s r€*J*?J/^ 
ambition is to prove himsel f a correct dictionary , con- 
cordance^ cncyclop_edia, polyglot, b ibliotheca, biblio- 
grapher, any thing rath er than a thinke r ; for he would / 
father pore his eyes out in searching precedents and JV_ 
testimonies, and br eak his back with carrying them, 
than risk an original reflection, or stamp an argument 
with the image of his own thought. 

And how is public opinion formed and expressed ? 
Is there not a n orthodox faith in politics a nd litera- /^\s\r<> 
ture, as much as in religion? Or, at least, are there not J^ £ ^ l/ ^ 



ir^~~ 




6$ 

two Cat holic creed s, th at of the Eastern and Weste rn 
church, who may differ on some minor points, yet 
agree in essentials, especially in holding the authority 
of the fathers a n d traditions of the elders ? And are 
not the scattered few who differ from both too cowardly, 
like many in religion, to make known their real senti- 
ments ? 

There must be parties; for such is the e nslave d 
state of intellect, that the multitude are fit only for 
being the multitude , going ever as they are led. If 
the Tories have a bold leader , they will be the popular 
and prevailing party ; if the Wh igs have a bold leader , 
they in their turn will prevail, and have their day. 
There must be an authoriz ed 'opinion ^ like an autho- 
r ized version of scnptur e^and confession of faith to 
be the creed of a ll the faithful. And this authorized 
opinion must proceed from the mouth of an authorized 
oracle, through the ear to the memory of those around; 
and thence through then* mouth to the ear of others, 
and thus onward 4o the remotest bounds. It must 
steal along in the dark, by circuitous course. It is 
not like a beam of light reflected from a thousand 
breastplates in a moment of time. It is not truth 
shining forth from a thousand understandings ; it is 
echo, memory, repeating the holy faith of Father Pope. 

It is quite amusing to hear the emphasis with which 
the collegian from college, the metropolitan merchant, 
physician, la wyer, in the country , parson and book- 
maker, when in the country; the reviewer and the news- 
writer say we and our. The orthodox faith is always 
implied in the we or the our. 

When a new book is published, or a new political 



69 

measure is adopted, the faithful a re greatly straitened 
in their own bowels. They know not well how to 
show a firm countenance, or to put a bold face upon 
the matter; their tongue falters like the foot of a 
baby who has not hold of the leading-string. But 
see them tomorrow , when they have heard the autho- 
rized opinion , or read the authorized review or nezvs- 
paper. Oh! it is all p erfectly ri ght and good , or 
wholly wrong and bad ; or it is good thus far, and 
wrong to such an extent. And with admirable preci- 
sion, they, though a thousand of them a thousand 
streets apart, will quote the very saj^ej^ai^tif fs an d 
excellencies, or name the very same defects and ble- 
mishes. Some L ord Chief Ju stice or L ord Chancell or 
h as decided, beyond whose decisio n t here is no ap - 
peal.. And if you attempt a revision of the sentence, 
you may expect summary vengeance. All this is as 
might be expected. The good work was begun in 
their soul when they learned their catechism and 
gramma r. Even then they learne d to walk by faith, 
and not by sig ht. 

~L would not force men to reflect, any more than I 
would force drunkards to be sober. All I aim at is 
to bring them, if possible, in their sober moments, to 
call things by their proper names. Let grammarians, 
who boast themselves the representatives of sound 
sense and right reason, fairly returned and duly sworn 
into parliament, henceforth express all their .enact- 
ments in true and proper words, calling every thing 
by its rightful name. 

If they are any way awed, bribed, or compelle d, as 
the Rump Parliament (the only corrupt parliament 



70 

that has ever been in England) was by Cromwell, to 
speak against their better judgement, — let them say so, 
and let all their enactments run thus : — 

" Whereas our venerable sovereign Custom, who ruleth 
overall the earth, who ever was, now is, and evermore 
shall be the sole ar biter of language , hath willed, decreed, 
and commanded, that whatever is is right, and shall con- 
tinue, provided always that it be an absurd doctrine 
or corrupt practice ; for law is not made for the righte- 
ous; truth and sound sense are a law unto themselves, 
having the work of the law written in their heart : and 
arbitrary law is made to oppose that law as the law 
in the members warreth against the law in the mind, 
to bring it into captivity, 

" Be it therefore enacted, that all the idols which 
folly hath set up be duly worshipped ; and that who- 
ever shall treat these adorable idols with disrespect 
be accounted guilty of libel and high treason, as if he 
had imagined the hurt or spoken against the person 
of his sacred majesty ; who, it is well known in all 
the earth, is infallible and immaculate, as his Supreme 
Highness the Pope, who thinketh no foolishness in 
his heart, neither doth any evil in practice, but re- 
maineth only wise and wholly perfect continually. 

"And be it further enacted, that all persons guilty of 
libel against grammar, or est, etk, m, or any word, 
syllable, or letter whatever, which, having no protec- 
tion in reason, requireth the protection of law, shall 
be punishable by pillory and banishment. 

"And for the speedier execution of justice on the of- 
fender, be it further enactea 1 . that any man, woman, or 
child may punish said offender, without trial, judge, 



71 

or jury ; for that would be only a needless delay and 
needless form in this case, unless it shall be found to 
punish offender the more, by expense in money, ex- 
pense in feeling, or any other expense whatever. 

" Be it therefore enacted, that any man, woman, or 
child, learned or unlearned, wise or foolish, may, with 
the assistance of his neighbours, put the offender in 
the pillory, making him a laughing-stock, a by-word 
and reproach, because, saying who instead of whom, 
and learn for learnest or leameth, he proved his igno- 
rance of and malice against the law and the king. 

"And after said offender has thus publicly suffered 
according to law and justice, let him be forthwith 
banished all grammatical company, being sent to Co- 
ventry or Botany Bay. Thus our venerable sovereign 
Custom wills, decrees, ordains, and commands. Vive 
le Roi! Vive le Roi ! Vive le Roi /" 

This shout of royalty ought to have been given not 
only in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but in all the lan- 
guages of the earth. As, however, Mithridates has 
not got all his tongues yet, or at least has not wagged 
them all in my seeing and hearing ; and as I am not 
quite perfect in the Arabic and Chinese languages, I 
shall content myself with paying a compliment to the 
Divine Nasal Twang ; though any compliment from 
me must be poor indeed, after all the Maitres and 
Maitresses of Europe have sounded his praise through 
the bugle-horn. 

Once more I must return to the Athanasian creed , 
though I dislike it for a text book as much as any lazy 
Doctor d islikes preaching at all. However, having 
begun, I must go on ; and if I cannot stick to the text, 



72 

I can at least go back to it when recollection returns 
I to its duty. 

RULE SEVENTH. 

" When the relative is preceded by two nominatives 
of different persons, the relative and verb may agree 
in person with either, as ' I am the man who command 
you,' or 'lam the man who commands you.' But 
the latter nominative is usually preferred." 

Seventh Rule is a modest gentleman, and therefore 
deserves gentle treatment ; and we are happy to have 
an opportunity of showing lenity, lest we should be 
thought angry without cause, delighting only in fury. 
There is no objection to modest May, save that he is 
needless ; and every needless rule, like every needless 
law and every needless office and every needless book, 
may be and ought to be dispensed with. Therefore 
J am the man who command (and why may not I be 
master in my turn?) Seventh Rule to go about its busi- 
ness. 

RULE EIGHTH. 

" Every adjective belongs to a substantive expressed 
or understood : as ' He is a good as well as a zvise man ; 
6 Few are happy ;' that is, 'pei^sons.' 

" The adjective pronouns this and that, &c. must 
agree in number with their substantives, as This book, 
these books, that sort, those sorts, another road, 
other roads," 

Truly rare information for high and low, great and 
small, Master Tutor and Master Pupil, Miss Teacher 
and Miss Learner ! And perhaps there are ten thou- 



73 

sand of these masters and misses busy at this moment 
with such precious lore of & liberal and grammatical edu- 
cation. For what is language worth now-a-days, unless 
it be taught and learned grammatically ? The beads 
and the shells must be strung grammatically, else they 
would have neither order, beauty, nor holy efficacy. 

" Every adjective belongs to a substantive, expressed 
or understood." Yea, verily, Domine, every wig be- 
longs to some pate or barber s block, seen or not seen, 
known or not known. c Few are well filled ; that is, 
'wigs? All this hath the world learned from rules 
of grammar. 

" The adjective pronouns this and that, &c. must 
agree in number with their substantives." 

Here is that bold self-authorized fellow Must again ; 
and though I can shake my sides pleasantly enough 
at the airs of the beadle, I cannot smile at the imposi- 
tions of the priest, who binds heavy burdens and lays 
them on men's understanding and conscience, swearing 
that they must carry them, or be burned for heretics 
in Hell or Smithfieid. 

This and that, like who and which, did not origi-1 
nally distinguish one number from another ; for this 
good reason, that any such distinction was wholly un- 
necessary, and is now wholly unnecessary, though fini- 
cal fingers will be meddling, and babbling tongues are 
ever itching to legislate. 

This and that are merely two indexes or pointers, 
such as we often see on way-posts or buildings to 
direcjt the eye to some object, and which are properly 
painted as a hand, because they supply its place. So 
that or this supplies the place of the hand, or rather 



74 

of a finger, and was originally nothing but its name ; 
and therefore, if we use a hand or finger pointing to 
some object or objects, it is unnecessary to use also 
this or that, these or those. This in that case or 
that in this case performs no service whatever ; and 
if we do call him it is without cause, and he goes as 
he came, without doing duty, as we sometimes without 
thinking of it call our servant, (because, often having 
occasion for him, we get a habit of calling him,) who 
is surprised to find nothing was wanted, and goes down 
stairs again much displeased, as if he were insulted. 

If words had sensation, how often would they be 
exasperated even to madness at the insults and abuse 
they receive from men ! And this habit of using words 
without meaning is the chief cause of all the false phi- 
losophy and bad grammar (for ba d^ sense is bad g ram- 
mar, and good sense ^ is good gramm ar,) that have 
plagued the world and nearly put out the eyes of intel- 
lect. And all those elegant expletives, unmeaning par- 
ticles, in all languages, which Mr. Harris and other 
grammarians admTre~alTmuch as the Egyptians did 
their mmnmies^ owe all their mummy ship to ignorance 
and carelessness ; for though they now lie or sit or 
stand and do nothing, like their grandmam cut in 
alabaster, they once acted their part well, and made 
themselves as useful as any in the family. But they 
were so often used with and without and against all 
reason, they were called and sent and kicked and 
cuffed about till the sense was fairly knocked out of 
them ; and men had done wisely if having killed them 
they had also buried them. But, like the good Egyp- 
tians, they could not think of parting with them, and 



75 

put them in their own elbow chair, and praised them 
now when dead more than all the living ; or adored 
them as if no more men, but gods over whom death 
had no power* but to exalt in the scale of being. 

One said they gave beauty and elegance. Another, 
that they gave spirit and life, though they had neither 
spirit nor life themselves. All agreed it was diffi- 
cult to know their real qualities and uses, and how to 
place and handle them properly. And books were 
written, giving rules to serve as laws for directions 
how to manage, handle, and place the mummies pro- 
perly ; when they were to stand near the door — when 
to be put near the fire to get warm — when before the 
open wind ow to get fresh air. 

We should have had such edifying matter upon 
the force and elegance of emph asis ma de out of heavy 
Italics — -telling first of all of its great difficulty — that 
nevertheless something would be attempted in the 
mean time till abler hands took the weighty matter up 
- — that the following rules would be found unerring 
guides in the true way of applying the emphasis — 
that now it was to be put down with all its weight 
upon t he verb , because of its importance, to send it 
fully home to the centre of the hardest and densest 
brain-— that it was to be stamped with main force 
upon argumentum ad hominem, to admonish him that 
the club was coming with the force of a giant. 

Such edifying matter we should have doubtless had 
upon Emphasis ; but he was so whipped and spurred 
by every one who attempted a literary career, that he 
was soon rendered such a miserable hack no gentle* 
man of spirit or taste would look at him. 



76 

From the furious manner in which Dash — is spurred 
and galloped, I venture to predict his race too will 
be soon run. He is high mettle, no doubt, but he 
cannot hold long on at this rate. He may seem in a 
mighty hurry — and so indeed he is on the road from 
Newmarket to Smithfield; and when the highest bred 
hunter in the land comes there, he soon gets into one 
of those elegant carriages, whose bold charioteers urge 
the fiery courser to the bold sound of dogs' feed ; giving 
the high-mettled hunter the honour of following the 
hounds to his very grave. 

We must not, however, run further after spirited 
Dash, powerful Emphasis, and beautiful Expletive, but 
Teturn to our two pointers, this and that. They are 
both still of some use, though they have been as much 
injured by time and wantonness as finger-posts by the 
way-side, which but indistinctly point to their object. 

Grammarians, never satisfied with simplicity, must 
needs compel this or that to do double duty ; not 
only showing but speaking, and speaking grammati- 
cally too — using the singular number when pointing 
to one object, and the plural number when pointing 
to more objects than one, no matter how few or how 
many, whether two or a thousand. Provided he only 
said, I point to more objects than one, he did his 
duty sufficiently. And to oblige him to say how many 
men or dogs he saw, would have been exacting of him 
a needless work of supererogation; for all gramma- 
rians possess a certain .spirit, of divination, which tells 
them how many men or dogs there are in all such 
cases. So that Plural has only to say more than one, 
and his work is done. The divining spirit takes up 



77 

the report where Plural left it ; and by his profound 
learning in geometry, astronomy, astrology, and all 
manner of learning, (for he is universally as well as 
profoundly learned,) he ascertains how many men 
were in the company, or how many dogs were in the 
pack ; and gives in the report to the nicety and cor- 
rectness of the minutest fractional part. 

Thus the private interpreter is always with them 
to tell what words mean, when they of themselves 
mean nothing ; and to tell how much or how little 
they mean ; or what shades and blinds and lines of 
distinction are in or on or behind or before or any 
way about their ideas. For the word of man, it is well 
known, is, like the word of God, a dead letter, and 
can mean nothing, and do nothing, without the teach- 
ings and enlightenings and operations of the spirit ; 
but is of itself dark as the moon without the sun, and 
lifeless as the body without the soul. As for soul of 
its own, that is fixed meaning of its own, it has none ; 
but is empty as a flute ; and is in fact nothing but a 
flute, which, as we said before, is a body that is matter 
or substance, which substance or body is a wooden 
substance. It may be box or some other wood ; as 
plane, mahogany, beach, holly, or the like ; which taketh 
whatever make, fashion, shape, form, or configuration, 
accompanied or attended or surrounded with what- 
ever carvings, gildings, devices, ornaments, and deco- 
rations the flute-maker chooses. 

Now every primitive language, or, to speak correct- 
ly, which is of the highest importance in philosophi- 
cal disquisitions, and especially on the nature, struc- 
ture, power, formation, design, and use, beauty and 



78 

force and meaning, excellencies and defects, the ori- 
gin and progress of language, to speak correctly, (for 
I would not digress too far, nor enter fully here into 
all the depths and ramifications of the subject ; for it 
is deep as the ocean, who can fathom it ? widely rami- 
fied as the veins of nature, who can find out the cir- 
culation of the subtile fluid ? and unsearchable as 
occult qualities, who can find them out?) every primi- 
tive language, and we know perfectly w r ell wh at pri- 
mitive languages a re, and where they come from, 

and stay or wander, and all about them 

They did not spring up out of the earth like mush- 
rooms ; so that it is hardly correct to call them indi- 
genous ; though all such w r ords, being of pure native 
classic Latin growth, have inimitable classical purity, 
beauty, elegance, force, sweetness, smoothness, har- 
mony, meaning and aptness in them. Neither is it 
quite correct to call primitive languages celestial; 
though they do indeed come from heaven ; but not as 
rain, snow, and hail, which are all truly of celestial 
origin, birth, nature and descent ; for these substan- 
tives are not synonymous, though to careless, ignorant, 
hasty, superficial and unphilosophical readers and 
thinkers, and perhaps after all only talkers, they may 
appear so. It will be found upon due careful and mi- 
nute inquiry, that there are no two words in any one 
language that have precisely the same meaning, import 
and application ; for application is of the same mean- 
ing with import, though import differs somewhat 
from meaning. And it will be also found upon mi- 
nute, laborious, attentive, close, careful, full, impar- 
tial, deep, profound, recondite, erudite, dispassionate, 



79 

unprejudiced, and patient investigation ; and Heaven < 
knows that we need all and if possible even more than) 
all the patience of Job, and meekness of Moses ; for) 
we have much to suffer and long to wander before 
we arrive at a clear, consistent, complete, well digest- j 
ed, full and fair view of a subject in all its import, j 
meaning, connections, relations, aspects and bearings ; 
for it is indeed a Memphian labyrinth, large, wide, ex- 
tended, vast, diversified, intricate, perplexing, mazy, 
and bewildering. 

Here is the angular square, there is the acute or 
obtuse angle. On the left is the massy column, on the 
right is the straight extended line. Here huge Co- 
lossus rears his lofty head to the palace of Jupiter* 
penetrating the clouds, and invading with his awful 
front the pure ethereal sky, threatening to blot Ze- 
nith out of the sidereal hemisphere. The earth seems 
to bend and shake and tremble, and all nature to 
groan under the awful load. There the sea is heard' 
to resound, and here the Nile to murmur with distress. 
The beasts of Libya are heard to roar or growl or 
squeak ; the crocodiles to bellow, the swine to grunt, 
the frogs of Pharaoh to croak, and all the insects to 
chirp. The huge elephant as much as sportive mon- 
key gives signs of woe that the earth is oppressed. 

But time would fail to tell, in classical elegant and 
sublime diction, the wonders of the labyrinth ; for 
they are more in number than the sand upon the sea 
shore ; which is indeed to let down my subject to the 
very ground : for though the sea be a great and mighty 
and noble object, yet particles of dust (though indeed 
man himself is but dust) are too small and too mean 



80 

also to enter into a proper and appropriate descrip- 
tion of the labyrinth of philosophy ; comprehending 
physics, metaphysics, logic, grammar, prosody, rhe- 
toric, and many other branches and ramifications of 
science which time would fail to name. 

Yet this amazing whole, comprehending innume- 
rable parts — some so distant that no astronomical 
tubes can reach them ; others so opaque as to darken 
the whole hemisphere of intellection ; a third class so 
minute, that art has hitherto been able to do nothing 
for nature in furnishing her with spectacles ; for 
though nostrils may be saddled, visual organs cannot 
be bridled where their own powers of perspicacity 
wholly fail. 

All these great and small and infinite wonders, 
all the dark excavations where no eye can see, all 
the perplexing intricacies ^where no foot can guide 
its steps, all these can a true philosopher, by erudition 
and patient inquiry, become as well acquainted with 
as a common porter with this Memphian city of 
London ; every parish, square, street, lane, alley, 
court, passage and edifice of which he can visit and 
revisit, go to and come from at pleasure, carrying his 
heavy load too on his back, which would crush to the 
ground any man or beast, but such man or beast as 
has long and patiently borne a heavy load. 

But I digress too far ; for, when we only hint at or 
touch upon such amazing things, a mass of matter 
crowds upon us from all parte,~as if universal nature 
were let loose to entomb us in her mi^htv bosom ; 
such a flow of thought rushes from all quarters, that 
we are like the feeble pilot of a frail bark carried far 



81 

from land, or whirled about in the centre of some tre- 
mendous vortex ; where we are obliged to remain 
long after the unphilosophical spectator has ceased to 
look after us, or to care any thing about us ; leaving 
us to perish in a gulf of learning, like the miser in 
the iron chest with his heaps of gold. 

I would however beg the reader's patience while 
I mention one thing, which may be as useful to him 
as it has been to me, and in the end may yield him 
as much pleasure and honour as it has bestowed on 
rne ; namely, concerning those all-important words in 
language which contain nice shades, distinctions and 
discrimin ations of thought ; for the sole art of fine 
and long writing consists in the right handling, ma- 
naging, an d placing of them . 

They are wool — but I ought not to make such a 
familiar, unclassical, coarse and vulgar allusion on 
this subject ; for a sheep is only a dirty creature, that 
is cooped up with turnips and dung — 'beg pardon of 
refined tastes and delicate noses — I ought not to have 
used that old dirty Saxon word ; but having unfortu- 
nately got hold of a, dir ty idea, I ought to have put it 
in a pure and pleasant-smelling classic bottle, such as 
stercus or jimus ; for dung is no longer dung then ; 
at leastTthere is nothingHnsightly or unsavoury about 
it ; you may suck it , or roll it as a sweetmorsel un- 
der your tong ue ; you may hold it to your nostrils 
and fancy it Attic salts or the perfume of Arcadian 
groves : all is pure as the Pope, and pleasant as a 
smelling-bottle. O the honey and roses and aroma- 
tics of classic language I I could sit here and sing 
myself away from all the rank smells of dog's feed and 

G 



82 

cat's feed and Jew's feed and Christian's feed in this 
Memphian city ; only give m e Latin cases and cover s 
and extinguishe rs for them, and in spite of nature's 
abhorrence of vacuum, or of falling into nought, I 
would annihilate them for ever ; or render them as 
fit for genteel company, as any gallows subject for the 
table of anatomist, and the eyes and fingers and 
nostrils of all his family. 

But they have been so greedy of Latin terms for 
every purpose, that they have not left of them for the 
necessary and useful purpose of casing and covering 
over unsightly objects and unsavoury emissions. I 
could have no objection to Anatomist royal helping 
himself freely ; but Botanist royal must also fill his 
large gardener-like hands, and his hot-house and 
green-house and whole garden and nursery with 
them ; because they are as potent, I suppose, to pre- 
serve perfumes as to smother smells. 

But whither have I wandered from the point pro- 
posed? for I was intending to say, that those nice 
discriminative words — but phrases are better, for 
phrase is neither so diminutive nor so unclassical as 
word, which ought to be verbum; being nothing but a 
barbarous spelling and pronunciation of the Latin ver- 

bum And any sense or good language which the 

barbarians have, they begged and borrowed of their rich 
and elegant neighbours the Greeks and Romans. And 
even those words of unquestioned barbarous origin, 
which now wear the toga and the tunica, were so 
ashamed of their nakedness, that they went on holy 
pilgrimage like other humble mendicants to Rome, 
to beg a new coat to their back, and to get washed 



83 

in the holy water of classic purification, before they 
could appear in decent and polite company. 

Let word, therefore, henceforth even for ever appear 
created anew in to Latin purity, the model of all excellence 
— let word I say with authority be spelt, written, printed, 
spoken, preached, prayed, and sung vcrbum ; and put 
all his cases on his back, especially his genitive plu- 
ral verbbrum, the very sound of which will enrapture 
all the musical ears in the kingdom, and cause a 
thousand bows to be drawn to defend his rights and 
to sound his praise : and all who are mighty to draw 
the bow, and men of strength to handle catgut, will 
come to the help of verborum against the barbarians. 

How hard it is to strive against the stream ! I am 
again carried far from plain wool ; but when one gets 
in sight of charming Italy, one could always stay 
there, as poor Sir Eustace Grey, whose abode night 
and day was, like the deemoniac in the gospel, among 

tombs or churches I must check my fancy, and in 

spite of all the charms of Italy return to business, 
and dispose of the wool somehow or other. It is in- 
deed a bad lot ; and I would cheerfully give any 
wool-stapler a good bargain to get rid ot it. 

I was going to say, that those nicely discriminative 
xerba are wool that can be spun to any fineness, even 
so small and so fine that vulgar persons can neither see 
nor feel the thread ; or know any thing at all aoout 
it, any more than if they were in a vacuum, or 
abstraction as the verbum itself implies ; for abstraho 
is compounded oiabs from, and tra'io to draw or take. 
So that if you take away all gross matter, as that gross 
body called air, which in and out and all around presses 

G 2 



84 

on the senses, you have nothing left but abstraction,, 
or pure vacuum ; in which nothing can be seen, felt, 
heard, tasted, or smelt. Now intellect is a pure me- 
taphysical being, no way clogged, hampered, or jos- 
tled in his contemplations by the pressure of matter. 
The mind is as much a subtile essence as its abode is 
a pure void. It is no longer deceived with such false 
optics as eyes, or false reporters as ears, or liable to 
be tumbled into the ditch or plunged into the mire 
by such blind guides as senses and sensation. Now 
the true theory of mind and matter is fully present, 
and fully within the magic circle of intuition. And 
the pure metaphysical spirit, as if omniscient and om- 
nipresent, findeth the world and its fullness, the uni- 
verse, and all its systems of suns within suns and 
wheels within wheels, in its own capacious bosom. 
If it peep outward, there is nothing to be seen but the 
eternal darkness which surrounds infinite space ; if it 
look inward, the universe and its glory and eternal 
light appear ; and the glorious work of abstraction 
and generalization goeth on dissecting the cranium 
of the minutest insect that ever fluttered a moment 
on the human brain. 

Having placed metaphysical mind in the exhausted 
receiver, we are willing to leave him there to his own 
meditations without attempting to disturb him by 
coming into his study ; for we have as great an ab- 
horrence of the exhausted receiver as nature of va- 
cuum. Nor have we any objection to every hole and 
crevice of nature being stored with life or intelligence. 
We would not choose to become a miner living under 
ground, or a salamander living in the fire, or a fish 



85 

living in water, or an insect living in air, or an ani- 
malculum living in vinegar ; but seeing they choose 
their own way of life and like it best, and can dance 
and sing as well as myself, I am rendered much hap- 
pier for knowing all this in my own concrete manner 
of living, neither wholly abstracted from light nor 
darkness, from heaven nor from earth, from land nor 
water, from solids nor from fluids. 

Those whose theorems are too subtile to be exprest 
by diagrams, are welcome to their own mental 
cheer ; perhaps it is ethereous meat or drink of gods. 
But as I am not a spirit, but flesh and bones as you 
see, and may if you please touch and handle, I must 
be allowed to live after my old corporal and carnal 
manner upon sensible substances. Nor will my gross 
and greedy senses be quiet without them ; for, in 
spite of my reluctance to leave my subject, I find a 
law in my members impelling me to roast beef; and 
therefore when I have dined I will return. 

Having just lapped my lips about that gross sen- 
sible image commonly called roast beef, I am more 
content than ever to leave Attic salt to Attic tastes, and 
all other ethereous abstracts to such fine-spun palates 
as can relish only subtile theories, theorems and spe- 
culations; for I am willing to give plenty of these 
subtile essences and their names to the dozen, that I 
may not be complained of for bad payment ; as we 
must give more of depreciated bank notes than their 
nominal value seems to render necessary. And they 
are not only light as bank paper, but slippery as 
eels and serpents ; and being no lover of eels and ser- 
pents any more than of flummery, I am willing to 



86 

help my neighbours plentifully. What a gross time 
dinner-time is for writing books ! I fear my pages 
will smell of the kitchen as much as a cookery book, 
or as if they were already made into neck-cloths for 
chickens, or frocks for ducklings, to approach the fu- 
neral pile. I fear the thing is ominous ; but it is 
difficult to get dinner out of one's head, while the 
taste of it is yet fresh in the mouth. 

After dinner comes the music ; let us take up the 
flute again, and try what we can make of it. It is 
not quite correct, we have seen, to say that every lan- 
guage has a flute of its own ; the language itself is the 
flute, or rather (for precision is of the utmost impor- 
tance) every word in language is a flute, and the spi- 
rit of divination is the piper or flitter ; who knowing 
all ears don't like the same tune, (for ears have their 
different tastes, as well as mouths and minds,) he 
plays one air to Mr. Harris the grammarian, and 
another to Mr. Huntington the coal-heaver. 

All this explains very well how these and those have 
only to say ' more than one, ' and then run off again . This, 
or that, -was to stand sentinel; and if he saw one, he was 
to say distinctly one; but if more than one appeared, 
he was to be quiet, and neither wag tongue nor finger. 
It was now plural's turn to do duty ; who instantly 
shouted ' more than one,' and the private secretary as- 
certained minutely the precise number, and gave in a 
true and correct report. 

There is yet another good grammatical reason, why 
this or that should be used only for one object, and 
these or those for more than one. When man di- 
rects his neighbour's attention to one person or thing. 



87 

it is natural for him to stretch out one hand. And 
what so philosophically and metaphysically proper, 
as well as natural ? Here is one hand for one object. 
Upon the same principle, it would be natural to 
stretch out both hands when he pointed to two ob- 
jects. Here then is the sole origin of the plural 
number in all languages, as well as the dual number in 
the Greek. This is an important discovery, which 
sheds new light and lustre on the science of grammar, 
and which I may boast without vain glory as entire- 
ly my own ; for none of all the many authors an- 
cient and modern I have consulted mention it, or 
give the least hint that might serve to lead to it. 

It may be said indeed, It is perfectly plain how one 
hand should express one object, and two hands two 
objects ; but how is it that plural expresses the idea not 
of two, but merely of more than one ; it may be txvo 
three, four, or a thousand? Why that is indeed a 
difficulty, which however may be obviated by suppo- 
sing that if man had been furnished with more hands 
he would have used them ; and when he saw four ob- 
jects, he would have stretched out four hands, or used 
the name expressive of four hands ; and when he saw 
a thousand objects, he would have stretched out his 
thousand hands. But poor man is more scantily fur- 
nished with hands and feet than many creatures that 
are called monsters, reptiles, and insects, and there- 
fore cannot use what he has not got ; for he can no 
more stretch out more hands than he has, than he can 
run further than his feet will carry him. 

Begone, thou vain pretender ! begone, thou laugh- 
ing-stock to wise men ! for thou canst no more exer- 
cise the sense or reason which thou hast not, than 



thou canst cease to be a vain babbler. If to theorize 
were to reason, the weakest heads would be the strong- 
est reasoners. Any sick brain well crammed with 
learned lumber or visionary notions would emit a 
universe of intellect. 

Reid well observes, that theories are the creatures 
of men, and that these creatures of men are always 
very unlike the creatures of God. They are all mon- 
sters. Upwards they may show the lovely female •; 
but downwards they show the ugly fish ; which ugly 
part, however, their creators endeavour to keep under 
water; like other jugglers, exhibiting no more in the 
show than they think convenient. Let them play 
at a distance, and they are frolicsome as the scuttle 
fish ; pursue them close, and blackness of darkness is 
their rear-guard for ever ; for they love darkness rather 
than light, because their deeds are evil. 

After all the learned prattle about language ; I 
would be glad to know of the philologists of the age, 
what the singular and plural numbers really are. Let 
them answer a. plain question plainly ; for the matter 
can be made as plain as their nightcap, if they know how. 
And I pledge myself to make it as plain ; only I wish 
to give their philological wits time and fair play : and 
I abstain from interfering at present, merely that I 
may not disturb or anticipate the dictates of their cri- 
tical sagacity. For I would not slip off from a dead 
lift, forgetting to come back to it ; having pretended 
that some work of necessity or mercy called me 
away. For often when the system-maker or monger 
has placed you in a gulf of difficulty, or slough of 
despond, he runs off perhaps to some waterii . and 

you see no more of him, unless it be up at the wicket 



89 

gate of heaven beckoning you to come after him. 
How he got there it is difficult to conceive ; but it is 
still more difficult for you to follow him, unless you 
shut your eyes and stop your years like Faithful, and 
run or flee as if all hell were at your heels. 

But to dispatch this and that. A plural form to 
these demonstratives, (or indeed any demonstratives,) 
as Mr. Tooke has proved, is modern ; and, like 
most other modern refinements, serves no useful pur- 
pose. This and that were used to express, or rather 
to point to, one object, or more than one object ; as 
they still do in the Scottish language — the most per- 
fect Saxon that remains in the island ; and as they 
still do in Dutch : deeze and die and dat being used 
for both numbers. The same might be said of them 
in high Dutch or German, though German grammarians 
have been fingering them, to make them distinguish 
masculine, feminine, and neuter, singular and plural, 
after the holy model of Rome. 

As therefore a plural form is a petty unnecessary 
refinement ; to make a rule of grammar to sanction 
it, is only to establish absurdity by law that it may 
remain for ever. And as I have said already, if it 
were only out of spite to tyranny, I will trample on 
arbitrary rules. I will say this twelvemonth, or these 
twelve months ; £fe many-a-day, or these many days, 
just as I think proper. 

I know that particular forms of expression may be 
produced, which have grown out of absurd distinc- 
tions under the fostering care of custom, the idol of 
fools and plague of wise men. But are we to sacri- 
fice simplicity to perplexity? reason to absurdity? 



90 

a general principle to particular modes of expression? 
Must we have a law to justify the language of such 
men as knew not how to think their own thoughts or 
speak their own words ? 

This were like making a rule of rhetoric for hem- 
ming or coughing or blundering, to prove that some 
favourite orator hemmed or coughed or blundered 
at the proper time, and at" the right place, and in the 
best manner. 

" These are the men who boast." A fine clumsy 
lengthy way of saying u Such men boast!'' How does 
such make shift without a different form to express 
singular and plural ? 

Any varieties of a word not necessary to convey 
meaning, are nuisances to be got rid of, not excellen- 
// cies to be preserved. I acknowledge no law in lan- 

' /^ guagebut the law of necessity. Necessity was its 
creator, and" nece^sltJTrrusT be its preserver for ever 
from whims and fancies, and tastes and fashions and 
customs. 

Whatever is necessary to b ring out the meaning of 
the speaker, or writer, is proper and good gramma r, 
Wid nothing else wJBtever. Only bring out the 
gleaning, and I care not how. Different men do the 
same thing differently ; nor is variety of manner de- 
fect or deformity. But the uniformity of thoughts and 
expressions which are all made to one model, or by 
one rule, is as hateful to me as the uniform of a re- 
giment, or the uniform of slavery, in any shape or 
colour, either in or around the court of despotism. 

If your neighbour pulls out his meaning by head 
and shoulders, you have no right to be displeased or 



91 

to dictate ; though you might with good reason ob- 
ject to a grammatical and regular form of bringing 
out nothing, teasing your understanding, and disap- 
pointing your expectation, like the mountain in labour 
to bring forth a mouse. 

Nor has your neighbour any right to be displeased 
with your slower and more ceremonious manner ; 
unless it be that you weary his patience, when you 
refuse to let out your meaning, or him into your se- 
cret, till James has fetched John and John has called 
Sally, that they may be all present to open the door or 
hold the candle. Thus if you choose to sa^ "These are 
the m en wJ^boast^'T choose only to em ploy one servant 
for your four, saying " Such 'm en boast/ ' But as I im- 
pose no law on you to prevent your having idle people 
about you, so you have no right to oblige me to be at 
the expense and trouble of them. 

I have but one grammatical rule ; which is, toex^ %cAr^ * 
press my meaning . This, like the simple sling of ^u.^^r^z 
David, I find sufficient for my purpose, and capable of ^ 

performing the mightiest work that my understanding 
or imagination can attempt. And being one instru- 
ment, not many and always in use, I find no dif- 
ficulty in wielding it ; but your multitude of rules are 
a coat of mail and armour I cannot walk at li- 
berty in, a greater burden than I can bear ; and in- 
stead of assisting me Jthey cumber me. I am think- 
ing of rules when I should think only of things, and 
the reasons of things. I am recoll ecting mode ls, when 
I" ought to make oninnals. I am recollecting how 
the dancing-master taught me to stand, or walk, when 



92 

I ought to teach myself to accommodate to the place 
or circumstances in which I stand or walk at the 
moment. 

I must again return to the Rules, else I fear the 
reader will be but too well convinced that in writing 
I have neither rule nor measure. 

RULE XINTH. 

" The article a or an agrees with nouns in the sin- 
gular number only individually or collectively : as a 
, christian, an infidel, a score, a thousand. 

" The definite article the may agree with nouns in 
the singular or plural number: as the garden, the 
houses^ Ae stars . 

~"The articles are often properly omitted : when used 
they should be justly applied, according to their di- 
stinct nature : as Gold i s corruptin g^ The sea is green ; 
jUjonjs bold." " 

For the very life of me, I c annot keep from laugh - 
ing, whenever I come in sight of these rules, any more 
than when I see dancing bears, huge w igs, long gowns, 
and other sublime trappings and appendages of our 
venerable so vereign Custom . And if any person or 
parson, well trained to manual exercise, whether in 
red coat or black coat, would volunteer himself to sit 
and write, and let me sit and laugh, we should go on as 
cheerily as Dr. S amuel Joh nson in a coach and six 
driving at full gallop ; though perhaps we should 
drive on so furiously, that every one who saw or heard 
our Jehu-like ma dness would run out of the way as 
fast as possible, rather than take a seat with us inside 



9$ 

or outside, before or behind. Certain it is that thumb 
joints and finger joints move heavily, like Pharaoh's 
chariot wheels ; else the madness of mirth c reated by 
the a bsurdity of grammars (for folly begets folly) 
would pursue, overtake, and perhaps overthrow the 
reader. He has to thank my fingers, which are as 
drag-chains upon the wheels of risibility ; else, per- 
haps, they might actually destroy all friction by ve- 
locity, and fly off in perpetual motion. 

" The article a or an agrees with nouns in the sin- 
gular number." Pray what is singular number, and 
what \s a rticle ? The question very probably never 
occurred before ; though no ways subtile or m etaphy- 
sical. Mr. Grammaria n, like Mr. Gardener the bo- 
tanist, and Mr. Miner the mineralogist, and Mr. 
Machine the book -maker , can live and grow fat upon 
crabs and withered leaves, and dry roots and hard 
stones and rus ty meta ls, finding them good for diges- 
tion, as hens do gravel ; or for their asthmatic affec- 
tion, as those who are tight-chested swallow iron to 
set the pulmonary b ellows a t work, to blow upon it 
lest they should fail to hold wind by lying idle. 

To say that the article a or an must agree with 
nouns in the singular number, is as absurd as to say 
that one shilling must agree with one piece of silver, or 
that a shilling must agree with itself. The article a 

or an is itself the singular nu mber ; because it is the 

-« — ° ■■■' 7 

numeral name ont. formerly written and pronounced 
as it is still in Scotland ane. If I say one foot, two 
foot, thousand foot ; the first may be called the sin- 
gular number, the second the dual number, and the 



94 

third the thousandal number. But what purpose do 
such technical pedantic na mes serve, but to bewilder 
infant intellect; and to give a show of learning to the 
truly unlearn ed, and of wisdom to folly ? 

The singular number often appears without the ar- 
ticle ; but then it is only a contracted or elliptical form 
of expression, which grew out of the extended form ; 
for as language ever tends to become more smooth, 
so it ever tends to become more elliptical : nor is -this 
elliptical tendency unfavourable to the real purpose of 
lanouase, seeingr the human understanding is never left 
behind, but flies with the wings of Mercury, which are 
ever becoming more swift in the progress of their course." 
When I say 'inch, the city, St. Paul's, "Change," I am 
as well understood as if I used the full mode of ex- 
pression, by saying 'an inch, or one inch, the City of 
London; St. Paul's church in London/ Sec. 

As we have unintentionally noticed the singular num- 
ber, I promise faithfully to leave the plural (for the 
present) unnoticed, that others may have the glory of 
making a discovery ; for discovery respecting it is as 
much wanted as respecting Africa and Tombuctoo. But 
for my own part, I have no disposition to glory in reve- 
lations more than in mysteries. I make no pretension to 
critical acumen, profound or universal scholarship. Any 
useful discovery in language that I have yet made, 
has been by sw eeping away the ji.c r :^ ical cob - 
webs__and re moving the learne d lumber which have 
been heaped on useful learning. I have had both 
hard and dirty work of it indeed — have often toiled 
and sweated in vain : often in danger of beins smo- 



95 

thered or suffocated, or buried alive . Any learning 
I have is my own dear-bought property, earned by 
the sweat of my brow ; for I never was on nurse's 
knee in grammar s 9^^°i_°_I_C9y^g e - But a thousand 
times have I been disposed to curse their books, or 
my own hapless fate^ 

To help to just conceptions of what is called the 
article, I present a table of its principal different forms 
in Europe. 



German. Dutch. 


Saxon and Scotch. 


English 


etlt ten 


ane 


one 




(2 


an 
a 


Greek. Latin. 


Italian. Spanish. 


French. 


sis h unus -a -urn 


un un 


un 


'voc, &c. &c. 




on 



It will be seen by this table that the vowel is a 
Proteus taking any shape. The consonant is firm to its 
post, and to its primitive form; for it happened to be a 
nasal letter, else Frenchman's nose would have turned 
from it with disdain. It must have been content to be- 
come fashionably and sufficiently small and thin to creep 
out at either of the two wicket gates of Paris, or have 
been denied a passport for ever ; for sovereign cus- 
tom or caprice is as tyrannical in France as either 
its old or new military government ; and sends off 
good simple and bold words, or forms of words, and 
good sound maxims in manners and morals and politics, 
to eternal imprisonment, eternal banishment, or eter- 
nal sleep, with as little ceremony as it sends off am- 



96 

bassadors to play leapfrog, or spit the venom of de- 
ceit and cruelty. 

All who are cured, or curing, of the classic mania 
will allow that slg is the Gothic or German numeral 
till, or our good old ane softened down by Gre- 
cian mouth. In numerable proofs could be presented 
of n and indeed of aiyy_dej^taJjTor n is as much den- 
tal as nasal) passing into s ; but I doubt if a single 
unexceptionable instance can be furnished of s passing 
into ?z. After all that Greek and Roman writers 
might say and pun about the serpentine hiss, its 
easiness of emission secured it a rich inheritance. 
Old and young, the barbarous and the refined, 
would rather hiss, even if they should resemjble a ser- 
pent, than set gullet and teeth to work unless it were to 
grind down meal into their own bag ; that is a work 
of necessity and mercy, and must be done. As for 
Frenchman, he need not hiss to be like a serpent ; and 
he can sound the French horn with more ease to him- 
self than a Goth can hiss. 

If any other proof were wanted that ug is radically 
the same with ti% than the uniform manner in which 
letters transmute, those which are less easy of utter- 
ance sliding into or melting down into those which 
are more easy, the proof wanted is to be found in the 
Greek numeral itself. The neuter is h ; and h conti- 
nues in all the cases of the masculine except the no- 
minative. If such kind of proof do not satisfy on 
such a subject, it is vain to dispute about it. 

Now how e ver t hat th e principles of langua ge con- 
tained i n The Diversions of Purley begin to be unde r- 
stood, the point for which I am contending would, I 



97 

believe, be conceded without a struggle. And I think 
it will be also allowed, that og and cv, which are re- 
spectively changed into us and urn, the regular singu- 
lar termination of Greek and Latin nouns, are just 
sTg and lVj_ Proteus changing his shape so little as not 
to be mistaken but by such unobservant eyes as can- 
not discover the same actor under different habits. 

If then og and ov and u s and um_ (f or it is unnecessary 
to bring the feminine singular termination into view) 
be only sig and IV, the Greek and Latin singular num- 
ber are the verv same with the English singular num.- 
ber. All the difference is, the numeral, or that which 
expresses unity, is with them jPJg^lL anc ^ w * tn us 
for e-lock. It is with us harbinger to noun, with them 
page of honour . And these allusions express their 
respective merits too. Their article has all the stiff- 
ness of a pig-tail_j ours hangs artlessly loose as a 
ringlet of nature. Theirs as a page is always dangling 
at its master^ heels, whether wanted or not, oftener 
for show than use ; ours is a harbinger that never 
comes (I mean in the style of a good writer) but to 
give information. 

In Greek and Latin you have not the easy and sim- 
ple regularity of nature, but such a regular monster as 
ewe or box clipped into fantastic shape. You have 
the dull uniformity of art under the patronage of de- 
spotism. A mighty maze indeed, like a labyrinth, or 
Italian music, but not without a plan! When pig-tails 
came into vogue, all the regiment of nouns must have 
them ; from the colonel down to the little waddling 
drummer. Nor must the men only have them, but 
their wives too ; for adjectives are at least as closely 

II 



93 

related to nouns, as wives are to their husband s ; and 
as little liable to be mistaken to whom they belong, 
without any badge ofr clationship. No matter of 
that, they must all go into regimentals, and wear uni- 
form ; and if husband wore the sign of the legion of 
honour, or of the first, second, or third company, his 
bosom comrade must have the same mark, if not on 
the forehead, somewhere behind, on shoulder or knap- 
sack. 
/-"") This is the whole history and mystery of that idol 

/ l >ji£*'' / '' of pedants, commonly called concord. If they would 
consult their books - and their eyes and their ears 
less, and their understandings more, they would cease 
to adore Greece and Rome, and begin to know and 
respect themselves ; for they must yet have rationality 
somewhere in them, if it w r ere but as a spark under 
the ashes : unless their learning has completely un- 
done them, and their mind is become dark as mid- 
night, through the excessive brightness of Greece and 
Rome. 

To hear them talk about concord, and adjective 
having same tail or knapsack with noun, one would 
suppose it must be some mighty matter, for want of 
which the English language must be poor indeed. 
But wherein is it the poorer for having no appen- 
dages to adjectives and nouns of the same length and 
shape, to denote that any two of them are intended 
to run tog-ether in the same carnage, or to stand to- 
gether behind some lord's back while eating his din- 
ner? Would any adjective or noun we have be improved 
by giving it an appendage ? would oneus manus and 
onea zvomana and oneum thingum be an improvement? 



99 

Now you have theorem expressed in diagram ; and 
its absurdity is so striking to the eye as to make short 
work with the understanding; for nn-a femin-a or 
nn-um argumcnt-um is as absurd as a one woman one 
or one one argument-one : and he who cannot see the 
absurdity deserves to stand as grave as an Egyptian 
mummy with a fool's cap on his head all the days of 
his life. The divine concord between adjective and 
noun is nothing but the absurdity of putting the article 
in twice or thrice oftener than it is really wanted ; as 
a senseless baby or drivelling idiot chimes over the 
same word without meaning or reason. 

We must return however to the English article ; 
and I have one piece of advice to give English gram- 
marians : If they are still determined to tease and tor- 
ture the mind of youth with unmeaning names, let 
them at least endeavour to ascertain what is truth, 
and to express only truth. They say a becomes an 
before a vowel ; instead of which an becomes a be- 
fore a consonant. And the natural tendency in all 
words is to drop consonants, not to assume them. 
They are not like a snowball that increases by roll- 
ing ; or Lord Precedent's statute-book, that grows 
from a mite into a mountain by passing through the 
hands of many lawyers ; but, as Mr. Tooke has ex- 
pressed it, letters in words are like soldiers in an army, 

| M ' ■ ' — 'ft 

that drop off in their march, and the lon ger the march 
the fewer come to the end of it. 



A or an is also called the indefinite article ; which 
is as absurd as to say one is the indefinite numeral : 
but there is nothing too absurd for men to advance 
on subjects which they do not understand. 

13l% 



100 

The definite article, as it is called, is as little under- 
stood as that which is called the indefinite article; but 
its true nature and use will be considered when we 
come to the parts of speech, as grammarians choose 
to speak. I have only two remarks to make upon 
the articles in this place : the first relates to their dis- 
criminative precision ; the second, to their high excel- 
lence. 

"These remarks may serve to show the great impor- 
tance of the proper use of the article, and the excel- 
lence of the English language in this respect ; which, 
by means of its two articles, does most precisely deter- 
mine the extent of signification of common names. " 

" A nice distinction of the sense is sometimes made 
by the use or omission of the article a" 

Nice distinctions are no doubt nice things, perhaps 
exquisite as e thereous nect ar. Hence not a few are 
very fond of them. Mystical priests have a great 
many of them, which they carry about with them as 
a charm for troubled understandings and consciences. 
Metaphysicians of all descriptions take large draughts 
of nice distinctions ; and find them as efficacious as 
laudanum for making them doze s oundl yj the senses 
being steeped in ely siumj or the metaphysical ether 
being as ti]uj}^jnjts_pj^e£j>lace, the centre of abs- 
tractor^ as if it were corked up to embalm mites in 
a bottle perfectly air-tight. 

If t here be any thing good, lawyers are sure t o be 
after it, and to have a good share of it secured by a 
good titl e to them and their heirs for ever. Hence 
the whole family of the Quibbles are remarkable for 
great and varied stores or nice distinct ions.; some of 



101 

them so hard and g rabbed that they grin and snarl 
over them like a hungry dog at a bone that had been 
twice picked a nd thrice gnawed before he Joundjtj 
others are so nectared o er with golden sweets, that 
they smack their lips abou t them as an alderman 
drinking turtle gravy. 

Bankers too have got certain nice dis tinctions t o 
the creatures of their own formation ; and as they 
will not buy any chickens but those of their own 
hatching, or any other stock but what was produced 
on their own farm ; they will brand your poor hog 
on the face, or tar him on the back, if he has not some 
nice distinction or other about him to please them : 
and sure enough, if he was not nice before, they make 
him less so ; for he is rendered so frightful as to be 
fit for no market whatever ; and you must be content 
to lose him though you gave five pounds for him ; well 
pleased, too, that you did not get branded yourself as 
if you were a gallows thief. 

The article the is said to be often elegantly put 
after the manner of the French. Yes ; we have learned 
to do a great many things^ elegantly after the man ner 
of th e French . We have learned to bow and cfoucla 
elegantly after the manner _of^^__Freiich ; we have 
learned to fawn and feign after the manner of the 
French; we have learned to despise morality after 
the manner of the French — who can go through the 
sickening catalogue of abject meanness and mawkish 
affecta tion? When I think of these things, though an 
obscure man little known and perhaps less regarded, 
I am actually ashamed of the people that ought to 
stand high above all nations, as the towering Alps 
oertop the little people at their footstool. The lesser 



102 

antics of this drunken apishness I can make sport 
of; but when it is presented in all its length and 
breadth and vulgar grossness, it sickens the soul into 
silence ; for one feels too much to be able to speak. 
Hardly a maste r and miss in all the la nd but must be 
puling and snivelling Out French, and" capering like 
a French goat. Go, goatish and apish asjyou are, 



ancTdangle at theTeelfToFgoats and apes ! 

Much has been said of the excellence of the article ; 
and hearing grammarians so loud in praise of it, dis- 
puting so vehemently whether the English or Greek 
article be entitled to precedence, I began to suspect 
that there must be something of idolatry in it ; for 
idolaters are ever loud and clamorous. " Great is 
Diana, great is Diana I" is a true specimen of idola- 
trous worship. 

I soon found that the articles so great, so impor- 
tant, so excellent, were almost, if not altogether, 
mummified. The body was deified because the soul 
had departed. But admiring those gods that death has 
made gods as little as those whom men's fancies and 
hands have made gods, I mean to show the divine ar- 
ticles and particles of all descriptions very little re- 
spect ; and wherever I can perceive the meaning — • 
the soul — to be gone, I will send the body after it. 
I would have no corpses in my page more than in my 
house ; no^cumberers in a sentence more than in my 
garden. My mouth and ear are as averse to a long 
story as my feet ar e to a long; ro ad ; and life is too 
short to be id ly wasted in mere chat ter. 

It cannot be too often reneated that the business 
of language is to convey f.hnnoht : therefore any ex- 
pletive, however convenient to sing-song versifiers or 



103 

sing-song proser s^ and however elegant in their eyes, 
is not excellence but defect, — as much as a needless 
wheel to a machine, or a needless joint, screw, or pin, 
to any instrument intended for utility. All ideas of 
beauty ought in this case to be associated with utility ; 
and any other principle of association will give false 
ideas of beauty. Utility is beauty in language ; use- 
lessness is deformity. In the family of words there 
ought to be no idlers any more than in a family of 
bees. 

No sooner did this allusion occur than Fancy took 
flight to the busy family it used to contemplate far 
from the noise and smoke of the great city. Some 
were seen carrying in what was useful ; others carry- 
ing out what was useless. It was evident they de- 
lighted in cleanliness and good furniture, and had no 
love or reverence for corruption and lumber because 
they were old ; nor even for antiques, sculpture, carv- 
ings, and paintings ; for they tumbled out beautiful 
and elegant pieces of wax-work that had cost infinite 
skill and art and labour, with as little ceremony as the 
dust which had collected on the floor, the cobwebs 
on the walls, and the loose plaster about the ceiling. 
When told that they ought to preserve these as pre- 
cious antiques and rare models of art, they replied 
that they had no notion of sparing lumber and rust and 
corruption because they were old ; the oldness of 
them was their greatest objection to them : and as for 
models of art, they could do very well without them, 
having as good wit in their brains as Adam or any of 
his posterity : and they had all the divine models of 
nature before their eyes ; which, like all works of true 



104 

greatness, never yet turned men into servile imitators 
or slavish copyists ; who have no genius but in their 
eyes and ears and fingers. When you stand' with awe 
in the presence of the greatest master you admire, do 
you ever for a moment feel an impulse to become a 
copying machine, or to lay up his stores in your me- 
mory, and then gape over the hoarded treasure like the 
poor soul of the antiquarian, or the poor soul of the 
miser who has no heart to enjoy his hoard, and is 
infinitely poor for being rich ? Do you not feel the 
ethereal touch of the mighty hand kindling all the god 
within you, creating you into a creator ? 

What have models of art done for men, but to 
make them stand still like the poor stationary Chinese, 
who can do nothing but what their forefathers did a 
thousand years ago ? or to turn men backward to the 
worst kind of barbarity, taking with them all the 
vices and diseases of civilization, and all the foppery 

of excessive refinement ? Beho ld the plains of M em- 

_f — ■ — '■' ■ ■ -» 

phis and Babylon, of Greece and Italy ! The dotage 
or mental deat h whic h reigns there grew out of servile 
imitat ion, and s lavish respect for the dead a nd their 
works. The history of the world proves, that when 
nations become passionately fond of an tiques and 
models they are verging into the dotage of old age ; 
when, as children, they are ple ased wi th bawbles 
without the possibility of ever putting away childish 
things but with life itself. The child who used to take 
his bawbles to bed with him grows out of conceit 
with them, and toowsj^m away. The dotard takes 
his bawbles with him to the bed of death. 

The history of the world proves that in proportion 



105 

as nat ions become rich in money th ey b ecomejjoor 
in virtue ; and that in proportion as they heap up 
and sl avishly admire model s, they decline in native 
genius. The descendents of great ancestors have 
usually less of their g reatness in proportion as they 
inherit highjitles and rich estates. They may come 
up to the stature of perfect amateurs and connoisseurs ; 
they may have eyes to see old coins and pictures, and 
a passion for heaping them up like the miser for gold 
and silver and copper j they may be proud of having 
an immense library, and may be able to read the let- 
tering on the back of t he binding; ; they may have an 
ear for Italian music, and be supple-elbowed and 
flexible-throated, and may even ascend by hard study 
to the high and towering preeminence of Doctors of 
m usics nay more; they may become minutely ac- 
quainted with the whole s ystem and anatomy o f na- 
ture in botany ; tracing with equal precision the cir- 
culation of her blood and the palms of her hands, tell- 
ing what stuff her shift and pelis se are made . of; how 
many toes she has to every foot, and how many joints 
or sinews or fibres to every toe ; or by what laws and 
degrees of affinity her children marry and are given 
in marr iage , and b eget and ha ve children. 

Nor is their knowledge diversified, general, or uni- 
versal only ; it is deep and profound as the inward 
recesses of the heart, or the deep shaft of a coal-pit 
and the dark caverns of the miner. Nor are they 
deep and profound only, but high and lofty also ; for 
they can ascend to heaven and tell the number of the 
stars, and call them by their names. All this is very 



106 

great and splendid, especially in noblemen whose fa- 
thers have been noblemen for many generations, and 
whose blood has not crept or filtered through such 
a mean earthy substance as native genius, but has 
purled melodiously through silver an d gol den pipe s 
of exquisite art and taste for time immemorial. 

O what a falling oi f from the bold and hard y cliffs 

of native genius ! and what a climbing up by the 

Wider oi mutation, or minute attention t o petty 'things, 

by little yet h eavy folks , who with all their attempts 

' to fly on artificial wings can never lea ve the ground ! 

/d*-****' ) Now that the Bacons and Barrows and Taylors are 

' j$ & /r °'*T' j, no niore, see what a little race of feeble folks run in 

J^y ^^^ an d out and hop about the two great warrensj If 

they be of the same breed — if giants^are already come 

down to conies — he who comes after me will not only 

find that rabbit-warrens are appropriated, but that 

they are no longer appropriate, and that he must 

change the name to suit the nature of the thing, by 

having recourse to ant hillocks. 

Great talents, like the mighty prodigies in the book 
of Revelation, come up out of the earth ; not down 
from these classic heavens of high antiquity and high 
privilege and high pretension. 

Men of real mind attained their strength and sta- 
ture without sitting; on the nurse's knee, or receiving 
her officious attentionsand stuffings_and bandages and 
carrying; and without sitting at the surfeiting table 
of a rich library, or reclining on the soft couch of col- 
lege pnvilege, or holding dalliance with the muses in 
academic bowers. They grew up like the palm tree, 



107 

in spite of the depressions of poverty and care , and 
fear of want, and the scorn of insolent classic artisa ns. 
They braved, like the hardy oaks of the fo rest, the 
frowns and fury of the gods . These boasted classic 
grounds and gardens and nurseries can show nothing; 
but f eeble shrubs and sickly plants. 

The nurserymen take care indeed to give these 
plants a good name, long, Latin, and sonorous , — well 
tied about their neck, that all may see and read and 
know that they are true exotics, which grew in the 
universal hothouse or nursery. Whom the grace of 
ancestry brings to college rich in money and igno- 
rance and vanity and vicg, the grace of Alma Mater 
sends away rich in degrees, and laden wi th man y ho- 
nouns. And if the lad be even a poor lad, but a 
good dutiful son, Alma Mater will put diploma in 
his pocket for passport to place in church and state ; 
and he will never want for_ place and m oney, having 
flip loma. If he come into any distress, he has only to 
show diploma ; he will find it efficacious as any charm 
or mUsonic si gn both to feed his hungry mouth and 
clothe his naked body ; for if the worst should come 
to the worst, and he can get neither church nor cha- 
pel, place nor pension, he can get grammar school, 
or begin boarding-school, and diploma will bring 
scholars. 

But, Doctors, you have played off this trick long 
enoug h, of putting classic~Ta15gTs^ on empty __bot- 
tles ; you ought firsT lo fill them before y ou_.cork, 
>eal, or label them : I mean not however that you 
should fill them with wind as bladders, or with fixed 
air as soda water or barmy small beer. You are 



108 

either too free of your lungs and windy mixtures, or 
many of your subjects came so vacuous to college 
that an uncommon quantity of classic air rushed into 
them ; for they are frothy or flatulent or flattish all 
their fife after, and are, as is usual with flatulency, 
much troubled with indigestion, bile, and heartburn. 

But, Doctors, we won't be pu t off with titles and 
degrees ; we will try not the label but the bottle — 
we will read the book as well as the title gage — we 
will look in to see what sort of stores and goods are 
kept where the splendid and pompous sign is hun g 
out ; and if we find the bottle empty, or filledjwith 
soda water instead of good porT^or^ claret — the 
book nothing but title page^— the attic story, where 
the splendid sign hangs, as poor or void as if it had 
said < Marine stores, Rag warehouse, or Lodgings to let 
unfurnished ' — woe be to your nurslings ! for we will 
not only tear off the gown that covers the ir rags and 
nakedness, but put them in a tarjj arrel and roll them 
in feathers . 

How fond some people are of haranguing when 
once their tongue is set agoing ! Fancy was putting 
words into the mouth of bees ; and presently he forgot 
all about bees, and was hurried away with such a tem- 
pest of passion that I could scarcely write fast enough 
after him to give only the substance of his speech. 
When he cooled a little, and turned his attention to 
the bees again, he saw a great bustle, such as is seen 
when lady faints in crowded court, church, or thea- 
tre. Some were pulling, others pushing, as if in haste 
to bring the gentlewoman to the open air ; but when 
they brought her to the outer porch, instead of bolster- 



109 

tog up her head, fetching water, or holding smelling- 
bottle, they tumbled her down o il the cold grou nd — 
for she was dead— and that was all the funeral they 
meant to give her, hiring neithejr mourners to go about 
the streets, nor parson to lead the procession and read 
the burial service. 

So, so, quoth Fancy, you are no Catholics, or Epi- 
scopalians either ; you are neither overloaded with su- 
perstition, nor with reverence for the dead. I fear 
you believe in neither hell nor purgatory, nor efficacy 
of priestly office to pray the soul to heaven. Nor 
are you Egyptians, who must keep the body when 
they cannot keep the soul. You do not embalm your 
dead, though you have plenty of honey and wax ready 
for the purpose. You keep no mummies either at 
your fire-sides or in your colleges. As soon as life 
goes out, after it must go the body also ; for you have 
no notion of such elegant expletives or particles as 
corpses, or of their giving spirit and life to the whole 
family. It would seem, you suppose, that being them- 
selves corrupt they might cause general mortality if 
suffered to remain. And as to the right handling, 
managing, and placing of them, you are no way nice; 
for you handle and manage them rudely, and place 
them on the cold ground to look after them no more. 
But methinks, too, as the deceased has evident marks 
of quality or royalty about her, you ought to have 
laid her in state, to show that she was not made of 
the same stuff as vulgar persons ; and all the court 
and all the city, and indeed the whole nation, ought 
to have gone into mourning for such a heavy public 
loss ; and your king and queen and all your ministers of 



no 

state ought to be as compassionate as their neigh- 
bours to the poor and needy; encouraging industry, 
too, by employing dress-makers and tailors : and your 
king ought to have set his own princely head and 
hands to work to clip out a model for all the coats of 
the kingdom ; showing that he does not, though a 
prince, despise domestic concerns — imitating^the ex- 
ample of those great princes who spent most of their 
time even among humble domestic females, giving 
them their respective tasks with their own princely 
hands, or graciously assisting them to spin cotton and 
wind silk and clip purple. 

These reasonings were interrupted by a mighty tu- 
mult. The whole family seemed together by the ears; 
and sure enough they were pulling the ears and limbs 
and all the members of a large dropsical gouty-look- 
ing gentleman, who was shouting most piteously. 

What now ? who comes here in limbo ? Some 
pick-pocket for Newgate, patient for the hospital, or 
madman for Bedlam. He cannot be for Newgate 

o 

or hospital either ; for people usually go quietly into 
jailers' and doctors' hands. Why, he is madman sure 
for Bedlam ! Much learning, or perchance much 
religion, or much meddling in politics or lotteries or 
loans or funds or perpetual motions, hath whirled his 
brain and made him mad. Yet he cannot be for 
so mean a place a s Bedlam eithe r ; for he has the 
appearance of some great personage ; having a great 
abdomen like an alderm an, justice^ bishop, or prince. 
Has our great man got his head tur ned g iddy in jngh 
place ? Has high living made him high-minded ? and 
must he show his mettle by kicking and tossing his 



Ill 

little neighbours about as if they were made for his 
cruel sport ? Sure this is it ; and the little folks, 
though weak separately against such great personages, 
are strong by union to pull down Lord N ero and 
Lord Jerleries and Lord Laud from t heir trinityship of 
coequal tyranny, that it may not be coeternal but cease 
for ever ; Justice and Mercy shouting aloud ' The tyrant 
is fallen — is fallen to rise no more !' It i^j^oj^uku; 
commotion— a revcTuTIon ^— LoUa rds' Tower is to be 
pulled down ; and not a turret,~cIungeon, arch, pillar, 
or foundation of it will be left. All the instruments 
of tyranny and cruelty, as yokes, chains, screws, 
wheels, iron boots, racks, and whatever has the shape 
of oppression and torture, are to be annihilated — lest, 
being preserved as vestiges of slavery and monuments 



of deliverance, reverence for antiquit y sho uld conver t 
them into idols of w orshi p ; as the Jews adored the 
serjrjent that had bit their fathers in the wilderness. 

Old things are to pass away — old abuse s, o ld in - 
justice and oppressio n and cruelty ; and behold all 
things are to beco me new ! A new heaven and a new 
earth are to be created, wherein shall dwell righte- 
ousness ; a righteous government and a righteous 
people ; when no political wickedness in high places 
shall descend in corrupt streams to corrupt and de- 
base the people, as consuming fire from the belching 
mouth of /Etna or Vesuvius spreads desolation on all 
the plain below. 

All glorious and good wise people ! — a new creation 
worthy of a good and wise God as his last best work, 
which will remove the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil from before the tree of life, with all the 



112 

briers and thorns and thistles that caused pain and 
trouble ; when he will cease to afflict, and men shall 
rest from all their labours, enjoying the sweet fruit of 

bitter experience Then will all the morning stars 

of eternal day sing together, and all the sons of God 
shout for joy. For he calleth them not slaves, 
neither subjects nor servants, but sons. Nor will he 
have them any more under restraint and discipline 
as in their childhood, when passion was strong jm d 
reason weak. The heir as long as he is a child dif- 
fereth nothing from a servant , though he be lord of 
all, but is under tuto rs and governor s until the time 
appointed of thejather, when he shall have put down 
all rule and authority and power, and have put all 
enemies to freedom and happiness under their feet ; and 
have made them all kings to reign for ever and ever. 
Then will he prove that he hateth tyranny and loveth 
freedom ; and those who had worn the crown of ar- 
bitrary authority and trod upon the neck of slaves will 
be seen bending at the feet of them they had op- 
pressed, to obtain their permission to wear the crown 
of righteousness which fadeth not away. Then will 
the spiritual merchants be less ashamed of the pur- 
gatory where they bought and sold and got gain, than 
Calvin and Milton of their eternal prison and tortur- 
mg wheel of perpetual motion; as if the almighty 
Father were only an almighty tyrant. The ultimate 
end of the divine government is to make men free and 
happy ; and this end, which he hath proposed to him- 
self, he hath made known to them, to cheer their heart 
and guide their councils. 

Let this glorious object be ever in your view; and 



113 

employ only such means as are adapted to the end 
proposed ; for mere force cannot create freedom. It 
is the fruit of patient industry , not the prize of sudden 
conquest. Proceed wisely therefore, and venture not 
into a storm of passion, lest you make shipwreck of 
reason ; for passion uncontrolled by wisdom i s like 
the fierce winds of iEolus let loose to hurl thejproud_ 
towers fronTtheir thrones upon the humble mansions 
at their feet a 

Let Reason then ever control pass ion — let him 
show himself the only supreme power in the hea- 
vens above and in tEe~earth ben eath^ Let Turn 
not stoop to meanness by creeping after precedent, 
as if he were the last of a degenerate ra ce from 
Greek or Roman in the d ays of old. Let him not 
show cowardice by whispering o r equivocating — let 
him take the trumpet and give a certain and bold 
sound ; proclaiming deliverance through all the earth — 
that the slave be set free from his tyrant — that every 
yoke be broken asunder — and that the inheritance be 
restored which the cruel spoiler arbitrary Authority 
has taken away ; becoining rapacious and cruel by 
long precedent and long practice, depressing men in- 
to beasts of burden, and the very beasts into objects 
of compassion. 

Let Reason watch well the motions of his own ser- 
van^^nguage, lest he be perverted from the simplicity 
of distinct meaning into a piping musician to sooth 
the ear of pam^ereoTLuxury ; or into a mystical priest 
or (|mbblirigjawyer, spreading the veil of mystery or 
net of subtlety over the unders tandin g. 
. And let him in high disdain kick down the Babel 

I 



114 

tower erected in the confusion of tongues ; the foolish 
builders imagining they were- raising a lasting monu- 
ment of wisdom, when they were raising a monument 
of their folly ; and, instead of a tower that should 
reach to heaven, only forming a dark pyramid to 
imprison or a mighty labyrinth to bewilder intellect ; 
becoming vain in their imaginations, while their fool- 
ish heart was darkened ; changing truth into false- 
hood, and sense into absurdity. 

And let him throw all the husks of learning to the 
hogs ; or show that men are more senseless than the 
swinish multitude, if they prefer the chaff to the 
wheat, the shell to the fruit of the acorn. 

Let him spare neither tower, turret, nor foundation 
of vain and deceitful philosophy ; nor fool of quality, 
nor fool of learning, who would attempt to draw the 
world after him. 

Nor let him bow politely to the idol of fools, call- 
ing those worthy and honourable and learned, who 
have neither worth nor true learning ; ever showing 
that he prefers plain speaking, and distinct meaning, 
to all the fawning and feigning, the canting and whin- 
ing, that ever came from Rome and Paris, alike mo- 
thers of servility and hypocrisy ; for Servility and Hy- 
pocrisy^a re twin sisters, and Despotis m is their fathe r. 

Thus let Reason prevail over Precedent, Custom , 
and degen erate Habit ; let him make men's under- 
standing free, and then wi ll their words and actions 
be free also. Let him shame them out of saying and 
thinking after any priest, as if they could not think 
their own thoughts, and speak their own words. 
When men are brought to think freely and speak 



115 

boldly, then will an enlightened and manly public 
opinion be created ; and this enlightened and manly 
public opinion, supreme o ver king, lords, and com- 
mons, as well as the priests and the judges, will effec - 
tually, though slowly, throw off any disease in th e 
body polit ic ; as purity and vitality in the heart 
throw off in time the disease about the head, or any 
of the members of the body natural, without calling 
in quacks, who by violent operations kill the patient 
in attempting to cure him. 

Thus be wise and discreet, and employ the force 
of opinion rather than for ce o f arm. Show the 
lion front of resolution, and it will be unnecessary 
to show th e lion's rage . The victory will be com- 
plete, ere you have yet put on the armour to battle. 

Begin not the work of reformation with shedding of 
blood ; nor defile the sacred cause of freedom with 
impure hands. Only those who are washed in inno- 
cence are fit to touch the ark, or to minister in the sa- 
cred rights of society. 

Do not after your neighbours in France, (servile 
imitation you despise,) who changed old tyranny for 
new yet more exceedingly tyrannical, as young tigers 
are more furious than old wolves. Anarchy is the 
wt>rst of all tyrannies, and the despot of a day is the 
cruellest of all despots ; for, like a beast of prey, he is in 
haste to devour, knowing that he will soon be driven 
away. He is a robber and murderer, that must rob 
and murder in haste because he is in a public place 
and will soon be pursued. 

Beware therefore of the tyranny of anarchy, and 
its first-born in many respects after its own likeness, 

12 



116 

the tyran ny of an army headed by a skilful _a nd fa- 
vourite general. The o ld tyrant was a dot ard ; but 
the^oung is a giant. The old felt the infirmity of 
age, anlFsymptoms of death coming on, and was 
afraid of being overturned by furious driving * The new 
is a Jehu, that must drive furiously if it were but to 
keep the carriage of state in motion, lest it should 
sink down or fall in pieces by standing still. When 
the soldie r is lawgive r, ju dge and jury , constable, j ailer,^ 
and executioner all in one , h e cannotlSelcQe : when 
the sword is applied to so many purposes, it cannot 
rust. Beware therefore of having no right but might, 
and no might but that of the sword. A humane 
people like you would not rule even your ox or your 
ass with a sharp instrument, or rod of iron. What 
then would be your own fate, if goaded with a bayo- 
net under the name of being governed ? 

Give space for deliberation, and proceed not rash- 
ly. You will not only wrong yourselves but wrong 
the sacred cause of freedom, and the best interest of 
society, if you imitate the French, who have done in- 
finite harm to a cause to which they were no way 
fitted to do justice. For hitherto, Franks as they 
are, they seem fitted only for bondage ; which may 
be imposed on the most sprightly, as on the itlost 
dull and stupid ; and which is often as necessary for 
the one as for the other; for you must bind a monkey 
as well as a bear. But though slavery may be im- 
posed, freedom cannot be gifted, any more than hap- 
piness can be bestowed, where there is no mental fit- 
ness and moral capacity to receive and enjoy it. 

The French possessed no mental or moral fitness 



117 

for political freedom, when they rose in a body 
against their government. They were like oxen long 
shut up and bound to the stake, which when turned loose 
foam and are furious ; the very feeling of the free air 
rendering them distracted. And as such mad beasts 
spread terror all around, it is necessary to public safe- 
ty to have them shut up an d bound fast again : so the 
sober part of the French people were so desirous to 
have their mad neighbours tied down from doing mis- 
chief, or put into confinement, that they were willing 
to go in with them, rather than have them at large ; 
for a great number of madmen may be safely ma- 
naged in Bedlam b y a small number of keepers ; who 
if looser and at large, would throw the whole city in- 
to alarm. 

Consider too, that your king is perhaps the worthi- 
est of his race, as the unhappy Louis was the most 
humane man that ever sat upon the throne of France. 
TooTTumane to be first minister to tyranny, and 
high priest to Moloch ; for woe be to that man, whe- 

° I I— > i in 

ther hard-hearted or merciful, but especially if 
mercifu ^ who has to stand be^w^eji_J^gloch _and 
the people when humanity is roused, their patience 
exhausted, and they refuse to supply more victims ! 
It had been better for him never to have been born to 
the vengeful office, or thata millstone had been hanged 
about his neck while yet in the cradle, and that he had 
been thence carried and cast into the midst of the sea. 
Much is said of a power behind the throne. Yes, 
there is a power behind the throne, which in the end 
destroys the throne and him that sitteth thereon ; and 
that is the ever-growing power of Precedent and ar- 




118 

bitrary A uthority , which was small at first as a hand 
ball of snow, but which increases as it rolls forward, 
till it become s an enormous mass, and falls to pieces 
by its own weight, like theJRoman empire. It was 
at first beautiful, and seemingly innocent as a suck- 
ing pig, which all the family admire and praise ; but 
which grows in time into a foul voracious monster, 
that begins to devour the very children ; when all 
the family, struck with horror, unite in destroying the 
monster. 

When I view the page of history, and consider the 
natural progr ess of corruption and arbitrary autho- 
rity, Iexclaim, O that g overnments were wis e ! that 
they understood these things, and considered their latter 
end ! For, in proportion as they become arbitrary, 
they advance so much further and so much faster on 
their way t o des truction. Arbitrary authority is an 
ever-growing monster, that never saith it hath 
enough, and must in the end destroy freedom, or be 
itself destroyed. If I had access to the ear of those 
who sit upon thrones of arbitrar y authority , and if 
they were vi rtuou s enough and wise enough to listen 
to wholesome counsel, I would plead with them for 
their offspring, sa ying : Yourselves can do no harm : 
your ministers " ofTtate are all Proteuses that ch ange 
place or shape when responsibility would lay hold 
of them : thu s Nobody , who does so much mischief 
every where, is busy nigh t and day undermining vour 
throne , taking away the righteousn ess by which alone 
it can be permanently established, or by heaping such 
a mass of iniquity upon it as must in time crush it 
down to the dust. Your own eyes may see it ; and 



119 

your own heart may feel the relentless sword of ven- 
geance : but should there be security in your days, 
your children or children's children shall suffer aw- 
fully for the sins of their fathers and their ministers. 
Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings ! be instructed, ye 
princes of the earth ! Save yourselves and families 
and thrones from destruc tion. Make your people 
free and happy, and they will love and honour and 
serve you. They will shed their blood for you, if need 
require ; and one drop of freeman's blood is worth all 
the blood that ever flowed through the mercenary veins 
of hired slaves or inhmimnJajiizjTies, whose sole trade 
is shedding of bloo d, whose greatest efforts and suc- 
cess are in point of respectability to be placed on the 
same footi ng with those of gladiators and pugilists . 

Be not tyrants, but fathers of your people, and you 
will find them affectionate children, who will with 
filial tenderness extenuate rather than aggravate, 
and conceal rather than e xpose, your fa ilings and 
faults. If there should be a Shimei to curse you, 
and an Absalom to rebel and seek your life, there will 
be many a pious Jonathan to bless you and shield you 
from danger. If an impious Ham should see you 
overcome of wine, andimcovered in your tent, and 
report the shame of ytfur nakedness to his brethren , 
Shem and Japhet will cast the garment of love over 
you, to conceal the fault which they are toojnodejst 
to behold and too virtuous to praise. 

And especially must you exercise no lordship over 
the understanding and conscience of your subj ects, 
if you would have~the esteem and affection of the 
wise and goocL Their' words must bFaslree as their 



120 

thoughts ; and their words must be free every where, 
in public as in private, and from the press a s in the 
senate. SucfTTreedom (and without it there is no- 
thing that deserves the name of freedom) can be dan- 
gerous only to dangerous principles and dangerous 
practices^ and dangerous men" It were allbeT^but 
^pollute my page by giving a place in it to such a 
vile prostituted name— -it wer e a foul calumny ag ainst 
intellect, and against God himself, the supreme intel- 
ligence, to say that freedom of speech or the free- 
dom of the press is dangerous, but to bad maxims 
and bad pr actices and~bad "men ".' Shall folly prevail 
against wisdom and viceagainst virtue, unless wis- 
dom a nd virtue be establi shed and protected by law, 
and backed with an attorney-gene ral, and an army of 
ex officio prosecution s, and penal inflictions, fines, 
bonds, imprisonments, pillories, banishments, tortures 
and death ? Must Satan stand ready night and day 
to accuse Job befor e the Lord, lest he curseGod to 
his face, or touch his ^^oinfed, and do harm to his pro- 
phets, and trampJE^^jvirtue, good law, and good 
government^ Is intellectual strengtK" and' courage 
enthroned only in the vicious hearts of heretics and 
jacobins, who must be put down as monsters by the 
strong hand of physical force ; being burned alive 
down from Smithfield to hell, strangled on the scaf- 
fold, starved to death by poverty, or rotted to the 
grave in a noiso me dungeo n ? This counsel, this 
work is not from heaven, but fr om hell ; and there- 
fore it cannot stand. Your thrones cannot be establish- 
ed by iniquity, and by shedding the blood of the 
innocent; whose intellectual greatness places them 



121 

high in the scale of being, as the noblest image of and 
the nearest approach to the supreme intelligence. 
Humanity and justice and the souls of the slain cry 
aloud for judgement ; which being not executed spee- 
dily, your heart may be hardened like that of Pha- 
raoh against God and his oppressed children of men : 
but though judgement tarry lons^ it will come;~tEe 
cause of freedom may droop, b ut will not die . Un- 
less you could kill the soul as well as the body, your 
victory is incomplete. You must burn or strangle 
or behead or ki ll mind, ere you can put freedom in the 
grave. 

While there is true Genius in the world, he will be 
a Nathan jto_j^ophesy_ against royal tyranny to the 
face. For he is uncourtly, bold and fearless, espe- 
cially if he has never been in the training of dancing- 
master or drill sergeant : and he will not be awed in- 
to silence by prosecutions, fines, bonds, imprisonment, 
or death. He is an enthusiast in the good cause, 
and courts rather than shuns the crown of martyr- 
dom ; and would account it the proudest and happiest 
day of his life to follow Sidne y to the scaffold or 
Hampden Jo the field. He believes that the blood of 
the martyrs is the seed of the church ; and would 
drain his veins dry, that his children may receive 
abundant fruit of such precious seed, and hail 
him in heaven as their saviour as well as father. 
And his energies are proportioned to exigencies. If the 
cause of freedom be sunk into a low and seemingly lost 
State, it requires a mighty effort to raise her up, a costly 
sacrifice to ransom her from the power of the grave. 
If her friends are few, and enemies many, it requires 



122 

an Alfred or a Bruce to come forth a host in himself. 
If the hearts of many fail through fear, and they go 
back or into lurking-holes, and walk no more openly 
with her ; he "must show that there is yet one who 
can be faithful to death, and who can face the 
king of terrors in his most frightful form without dis- 
may. If because political iniquity, bribery and cor- 
ruption abound, the love of many wax cold, and 
apostasies are frequent and numerous, so that it is 
asked with an air of triumph, ShalF fidelity be found in 
the earth ? or asserted boldly that all men are false 
and equally venal, each having his price ; then must 
he appear as an ensign of incorruptible and unchang- 
ing integrity and boldness to the people, confirming 
his testimony by convincing evidence — fixing a mark 
of eternal infamy on the degenerate race, if they 
are not roused by his example into patriots — leaving 
the slavish brood behind him in scorn, among the 
flesh-pots and burdens of Egypt, seeing they are not 
worthy the presence of one freeman : — one who 
abhors the light of life, if it only shows him the dun- 
geon of confinement, the triumph of tyranny, and a 
herd of oxen in the shape of men : — one who would ra- 
ther go to eternal sleep, than live one day or wake 
one night with his neck in the yoke: — one who would ra- 
ther not be, than live to be afraid to die ; or in awe 
of a tyrant, and his ministers of cruelty, who have not 
the intellect of Milton's Devil to give them respect- 
ability; whose poor soul can rise no higher than the cun- 
ning of the serpent and the craftiness of the fox, the 
cruelty of the tiger and brutality of the bear: — one who 
has hope in his death ; whose own eyes and ears and 



123 

thoughts and feelings assure him that he is appoint- 
ed to endless existence, free and happy, where slaves 
and tyrants cannot come ; for he would as soon 
lie down and be footstool to Beelzebub, as herd with 
a slavish multitude : and if there be an almighty tyrant 
above, and a demi-almighty tyrant beneath, as popular 
faith reports, he would rather exchange petty v tyrants 
for truly great ones, by going to the empire of the 
prince of darkness at once, assured that he should 
find all there that heart could wish, but goodness ; 
and he can almost forget the fiend in contemplating 
the hero — the great intellectual qualities in the Nim- 
rods and Cassars and other mighty hunters and de- 
stroyers. 

Such then is the unconquerable lion in your way, 
O all ye tyrants of the earth both great and small ! 
You may kill the brave, but you cannot conquer his 
bravery : that will he hold fast, and not let go, taking 
it with him whithersoever he goeth. And except in 
the brute quality of physical force, he is as much 
superior to you all, as the soul of man is to the clod 
under his feet. He hath a larger and richer kingdom 
than you with all your authority ; for he hath domi- 
nion over all the visible and known works of God. 
All sheep and oxen and the beasts of the field, the 
fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea ; whatever is 
and lives and moves is under his authority ; and he 
saith to one Go, and he goeth, and to another 
Come, and he cometh. And in spite of your arbitrary 
power, he will be supreme over you ; and will at 
pleasure change you into oxen like Nebuchadnezzar, 
make you herd with tigers, wolves, and foxes ; or 



124 

crawl with serpents and toads ; or gabble with geese, 
or play antics with monkeys; and, as if you were 
not worthy of life in any way, will mummify you ; or 
make you into barbers' blocks to frizzle Prince Vir- 
gil's wig on; or chopping-blocks to hew the con- 
temptible idol in pieces. All this is the reward of 
your hands for sending your licensers and excisemen 
with their pen and ink on their button-hole, their 
permit in one hand and branding-iron in the other, 
to seize as smuggled goods, or stamp with license, 
or alter, mangle and condemn what has been written 
for the public ; as if man had no right of his own to 
think his own thoughts and speak his own words ! 
And what is far more cowardly and cruel, if you set 
on generals and armies with drawn sword and bayo- 
net behind him, without the possibility of knowing 
he was to be attacked, and without any means of 
defence ; ti^uth, which is man's best witness and friend 
at the judgement-seat of God, being here his greatest 
enemy. If steel is to parry with paper, let there be 
at least a show of fairness in the combat ; and let 
the sword be pointed to the brave man's heart ; not 
thrust at his back, as if he had fled when he knew 
not that he was pursued. Let him have to meet a 
visible danger; and let him have the honour of ap- 
proaching it with deliberation and firmness ; that 
he may not be confounded with the mean and the 
cowardly and the false, and assassins of the dark, 
who had never been taken in the same snare with 
him, had they not trusted to their cunning and craf- 
tiness for escape. The tyrant is as cowardly as he is 
cruel, who has recourse to the impious artifices of a 



125 

heathen oracle and the hellish arts of sorcery and 
witchcraft. Let him make the magic circle around 
him visible, that all who come near him may know 
when and where his mastiffs and furies will be set 
on to devour. Let Cerberus growl and bark before 
he destroy, that the victims of his vengeance may know 
they have approached the cruel mansions. Is the cruel 
persecutor so well known, and cautiously shunned, 
that he must have recourse to the snares of the fowl- 
er and toils of the hunter to catch prey? now 
covering the snare so artfully that it cannot be per- 
ceived ; now throwing bait plentifully without hook, 
that the poor fish may be thrown off their guard, 
and made to forget that ever they had nibbled 
the barbed snare ; now suffering the cautious sons of 
freedom who dread inclosure, to go out and in to the 
toils, or to run out and in to the snare, as if it were 
a place of freedom and safety, in which whole flocks 
lie down without fear ; when lo the poor victim is 
singled out from the crowd, and, having been betrayed 
with indigencies, is destroyed with refined and polite 
tortures ! Or now the guileful fowler has recourse to 
deceitful motions and deceitful sounds to allure and 
draw the innocent into his net. Nay, he employs 
brother to betray brother; the son the father, and 
the father the son ; and some are well kept in their 
bondage to be decoy birds to entice and entangle and 
ruin those that pass by. O monster of meanness 
and cowardice and cunning and malice and cruelty ! 
what shall be thy name ? and whereunto shall I liken 
thee ? for I search earth and hell in vain to find thine 
image and companion. Beelzebub would be ashamed 



126 

to call thee brother, or to sit on the same side of hell 
with thee ; and if thou wert among the ayes, he would 
go over to the noes ; and by his powerful eloquence, 
inspired by contempt and hatred of thee, would ac- 
complish the work of reform in all hell. 

To pretend that the press is free, when it is only 
a freedom to go into the net of a legal accuser, and 
into the dungeon of long imprisonment — thrown down 
on the same bed with noxious damps and vapours and 
vermine — is to add insult to cruelty and injustice. 
The man is told he is free to walk where he pleases ; 
but the moment he comes near the mansions of in- 
justice and oppression he is knocked down : he is told 
that he may write whatever he pleases ; yet if some 
enemy to freedom choose to give any of his words or 
sentiments a bad name, he is immediately pursued 
with destruction — like the poor harmless dog whom 
some neighbour has chosen to call mad. The mo- 
ment the sound mad dog is pronounced, the hue and 
cry and pursuit are commenced ; and the moment the 
word libel is pronounced against any poor writer, the 
chase is begun : and he must expect to be pursued 
alive to the grave; or driven into chains and darkness, 
and the lingering death of a prison. 

Can men call themselves free if their soul is not 
free even to speak truth ? whose mouth must have 
a license and permit ; or rely constantly on tacit acts 
of grace and indemnity? 

If you touch the freedom of the press, you touch 
with unhallowed hand the ark of the covenant which 
God hath made with men ; and were you anointed 
with holy oil to the kingly office, as Uzziah, the deed 



127 

shall not be guiltless ; and while there is one vigorous 
and manly mind left, the deed will be condemned. 

Leave the press free, and all who are worthy of 
using it will be on your side if you are on the side of 
good government ; but if you usurp lordship over the 
understanding and conscience, this alone is sufficient 
to throw all men of talent and manly feeling into 
the ranks of your enemies. And these are ene- 
mies more formidable than mighty armies. They 
lay not hold of shield and buckler, nor raise the shout 
of war, nor assume the grim visage of those much 
practised in shedding blood ; yet there is terror in 
their very mildness. Their mind is clear as the moon ; 
their character is bright as the sun ; and their fearless 
eloquence is as the roaring of a lion, or terrible as 
an army with banners. 

Such are the men whom injustice will make yourene- 
mies and justice your friends. Have but such men 
around you for \valls_a nd .bulwarks and armies and 
sentinels, and you need not fear the sland er of the 
tongue, the ca lumnies of th e press, popul ar commo- 
tion, or foreign invasion. They are as wise and dis - 
creet as they are bold and fearless ; and though jea- 
lous over the rights of freedom, they are indulgent to 
the infirmities of rulers ; and, provided the tyrant be 
kept out of view, will show much lenity to the greatest 
sinner. They know that men in high station are set 
on slippery places, and are liable often to slip and 
stumble and fall ; but if they fell seven times a day, 
they would rather assist them up than shout at their 
fall, so long as they are men and not devils. 

They know that men in office and high station are 



128 

ag cities set upon hills which cannot be hid ; many 
eyes are fked upon them, and many tongues are 
ready to rqiort all their spots and eclipses ; for all 
the stars of the firmament might be eclipsed without 
vulgar observance ; but the spots on the moon's disk, 
and the lunar and solar eclipses, are observed by 
all. 

Envy and factiousness, too, are ever ready to re- 
port faults which are not, and to aggravate those 
which are, in superiors and rulers. And the hungry 
scribbler courts popularity by constantly shooting at 
a high mark ; though he is but a poor marksman ; as 
some about the streets make a living of showing the 
moon by night through a miserable telescope. 

Those, too, who have been always up in high sta- 
tion have been too far distant from the nether world 
of common life to have correct information respecting 
men and things and public opinion. And those high 
eminences, which are constantly parched with the glare 
of royal prosperity, or withered and blasted with the 
corrupt breath of flatterers and courtiers and minions, 
are as unfriendly to the health and vigour of intellect 
and morality as the highest Alps and Andes are to 
the growth of nurslings from the hothouse. These things 
would be all duly considered, and the failings and 
faults of princes would be much better excused, and 
their characters much better defended, by talent than 
by steel ; by unhired writers than by legal prosecu- 
tors. 

The press is liable to abuse, as every good thing; but 
the best corrective of the abuse is the fair and honoura- 
ble me. And men of real talent and honest feeling are 



129 

always able to keep the wasps and hornets of scribblers 
from being dangerous, if they should buzz and bite or 
sting for a summer or two. And knowing the reproach 
that would fall upon the press, and the mischief it 
would do if left only in the hands of scribblers and 
servile imitators and mechanical book-makers, men 
of talent and virtuous feeling would keep them under 
their feet ; for if the press be free such feeble folks 
will never rise higher ; and quack reformers and noisy 
demagogues will puff their nostrums and bluster in 
vain. 

O princes of the earth ! every intelligent and good 
man loves peace and order and good law and good 
government ; and if the magistrate bear not the sword 
in vain, and in tyranny — if he be only a terror to evil 
doers, he will be the praise of them that do well ; who 
will not be subject for wrath but conscience sake, 
and will render him more terrible to evil men by their 
support. But governments must be, in the nature of 
things, becoming either better or worse ; and a true 
patriot contemplates posterity as well as contempo- 
raries — the future as well as the present ; and he would 
be ashamed to welcome his descendents to heaven, if 
they were a mean race like the slaves of France and 
Italy and Greece and Turkey. 

Small mistakes often cause long speeches and long 
books ; and many a tedious volume had never been 
written had not the author either mistaken his subject 
or himself : for it is easy to suppose that we have ten 
talents for writing when we have not even one. And 
many strive hard to stir up the gift which is not in 
them, and to employ the talent which was never given 

K 



130 

them ; though, indeed, he who can drive a business 
without a capital, and who beginning with nothing, 
like Lackington, leaves off with thousands, must be. 
a much cleverer man than one who must be started in 
business with a rich fund or large stock in trade. 
He can give a good account of himself; for if others 
can say that one talent has gained ten talents, he can 
say that no talent has gained ten thousand. 

All the long speech that has been given about po- 
litics would have been spared, and the writer saved 
from much hard labour, and perhaps much other evil, 
had the real intentions and motions of the bees been 
attended to ; for it was not a pick-pocket for New- 
gate, nor patient for the hospital, nor madman for 
Bedlam, nor priest, judge, or king, for the scaffold : 
it was only a large heavy lazy fellow commonly called 
a drone, whom they were pu lling and pu shinj^out of 
their way. All hands were at w r ork — some with hand 
spokes — others with neck and shoulder as if they 
were removing a mighty classic stone just come from 
Egypt or Greece, or a hogshead of wine fresh from 
Madeira. Every new roll or tumble they gave him 
he shouted aloud for justice and mercy. He said 
that he was born there, and had always lived there ; 
that it was illegal to turn him out of his own parish 
and out of his own house, which is an Englishman's 
castle ; and which neither king, lords, commons, ser- 
geant at arms, or constables, have any right to violate : 
he protested against their violence, and moved to stay 
all further proceedings. 

They replied that a man's own house ought cer- 
tainly to be a sacred sanctuary ; and that the hand 



131 

which offers violence to it ought to be l .cut off, as that 
of a house-breaker a nd robber, were it the princely 
han d of Uzziah . And they said if he would build, 
buy, or even reni a house for himself, it should be as 
sacred and inviolate for them as the ark of the cove- 
nant or inmost temple. But the case is quite altered 
when many people live together under the same roof, 
in the same community or family. They have then 
the right of choosing their company and fellow lodgers 
and shipmates, and ought without ceremony to turn 
those overboard who won't assist them to work the 
vessel, and who only devour their provision like rats 
and mice ; which they never feel any regret or re- 
morse in making walk the plank. They were happy 
indeed, they said, that they could give him a dry bed 
rather than a watery grave ; and only meant to turn 
him out to the street, where he might lie if he chose 
and beg alms of passengers ; or go to the workhouse 
if he could find work there and a mind to put his hand 
to it ; or if he liked it better, and as he had a good 
princely appearance, he might become courtier and 
beg a place or pension of the court. If not fit for 
prime minister, he would at least do to fill a gap at 
levees, or he might become poet laureat or minstrel ; 
for he had a good deep-toned voice, and was so mu- 
sically inclined that he would sit and sing and hum 
forever and do nothing else. They could not afford 
to keep a piper ; but he might be well worth a hun- 
dred per year, or a hundred per song, to those who had 
the money to spare and knew how to appretiate his 
merit. 

As to his threat of legal prosecution, — they said 
K 2 



132 

they were determined the matter should not go into 
lawyers' hands, and he lie in their way and eat their 
provision which they had earned with the sweat of their 
brow in the heat of the day, all the while that these 
lawyers chose to keep the suit in Chancery or any 
chance place whatever, where perchance their cause 
might fall to the ground, and the ends of justice be 
defeated. 

They were afraid too that Mr. Drone, being an 
idle gentleman, might while they were busy at work 
go about and bribe false witnesses — or be too much 
with Counsel Quibble ; and might outdo them in fee- 
ing counsel — robbing their choicest stores of nectared 
sweets to put honey in said counsel's mouth, that 
his tongue might be rendered smooth and flexible as 
the serpent that beguiled eve through his subtlety ; and 
that said serpentine member of said counsel, full of 
deceit and deadly poison, might pervert both judge 
and jury ; or said Mr. Drone might sweeten their 
mouths also to speak of him in the most honeyed ac- 
cents ; or they might be such admirers of said coun- 
sel's politics, legal knowledge, or rhetoric, as to say 
whatever he said they ought to say, find whatever he 
said they ought to find, and do whatever he said they 
ought to do. 

Thus Counsel Quibble's sole business might be to 
show cause, not to prove it. Proof is a difficult pro- 
blem without straight lines commonly called facts ; 
and being difficult might puzzle and torture the brains 
of those who have not mathematical heads and me- 
taphysical minds ; causing strange writhings and con- 
tortions of face and knees and all their joints — actually 



133 

pulling them about on their sliding-places as if they 
were set on hot iron like bears to learn to dance ; or 
throwing them into convulsions and hysterics. 

Too much light is as distressing to some minds as 
the beams of the sun are to weak eyes, or the light of 
day to the visual organs of owls. It requires great 
intellectual vigour to perceive that a great personage 
like Mr. Drone can be in the wrong, or that common 
bees can be in the right ; seeing that these mean la- 
borious plebeians were made to toil for him and wait 
upon him and fulfil all his pleasure ; plowing the field, 
digging the garden, sowing and planting, reaping the 
harvest, threshing the corn, grinding it into flower, 
baking it into bread, cutting it into slices, toasting 
them before the fire, then holding them to his mouth, 
and keeping all clean about him before and behind. 

Now as few have strong minds, every one is to be 
accepted in matters of dispute between great drones 
and little bees according to what he hath, and not re- 
jected for what he hath not. If he can swallow oath* 
and sugar-plums without digesting them ; and if he 
can contain and retain long enough, keeping his pa- 
tience and lozenge-juice from running out, he may be 
in all respects as fit and proper for the purpose, as blind 
and scentless hound for idle pack kept only to bark 
when and go where hound-keeper bids them ; or as 
well-bred monkey is fit and proper companion for Lady 
Vacant, who is as meek and lowly in heart as she is 
high and exalted in station ; and who is not ashamed 
to sit with her family relations, though they be poor 
and mean in person ; for it is well proved by that pro- 
found scholar and sound reasoner Lord Monboddo, 



134 

that lords and ladies without minds grew up to their 
high rank and station out of monkeys by care and in- 
dustry in the management of their persons : so that 
with powders and washes and razors and curling-irons 
My Lady Monkey is the Venus and My Lord Mon- 
key the Adonis you now see ; one of the tallest, hand- 
somest, and politest monkeys in all Europe. 

But, my fancy, when wilt thou have done with thy 
bees and lawyers and monkeys and lords ? for thou 
carest not what thou talkest about, provided thou 
mayest but talk. But I am not so willing to write as 
thou art to dictate. I would cheerfully be thy clerk 
to pray or preach after thee ; but I must be thy ama- 
nuensis to write after thee for whole days and nights 
together, as if thou wert a Burke in the senate, an 
Erskine at the bar, or a colossean oracular Doctor 
Samuel Johnson every where, whose every word 
must be taken down by the pen of a ready writer. 

If thou canst not contain thy wisdom or folly, and 
must open thy heart to the public lest it burst with its 
own fullness — go dictate to thy printer ; or become 
thine own printer as other authors have been before 
thee. If thou wouldest make me any thing but a 
scribe or pharisee, I would cheerfully give thee my 
days and nights. Pharisee thou wishes t me not : but 
thy requisitions on me as scribe are unmerciful ; and 
wert thou not a pleasant companion I would throw 
down my pen for ever ; for I would sooner dig the 
'ground or hold the plough than hold the pen of a 
transcriber and book-maker; vain of his collected 
beauties as child of a posy — and of his borrowed rai- 
ment as ape of man's coat, and boasting of authorship 



as oxJoweth_oveidiisibd4ler Now high and sublime 

with Welc h goat on the top ofthejuoun tains ; deep 
and profound with mole in the earth ; sagely bespec- 
tacled with owl in old towers ; tearing the bowels of 
Nature with merciless miner ; or tracing the palms of 
her hand as wistfully as old withered gipsy. 

To write after thee is irksome enough ; but to write 
after dull doctors, sta tistics, encyclopedias , inventories 
of the dead and their goods and chattels, rotten bones 
and mouldering stones and dry roots and withered 
leaves and butterflies and vermin, must be purgatory 
or hell outright. Use me kindly then, and I will never 
leave thee ; but thou dost often make me write ten j 
pages when I had bargained with thee for one. 

And I must not only be thy laborious scribe but 
thy watchful prompter too, as if thou wert a King 
John upon the stage ; or thy piping servant, as if thou 
wert a Cicero verborum ; to call thee down when 
like a falcon let loose thou soarest too high ; or to 
call thee back when like an eager hound thou stray- 
est too far or wanderest in the chase ; — now in full 
stretch after the fox — now doubling the furrow with 
the hare — and anon sporting with such feeble folks as 
conies. 

Well mayest thou rail at hedges and ditches and 
chains and yokes and laws ; for thou art lawless and 
disobedient as wandering Tartar or roving Arab. 
But if thou be a law unto thyself, O be what law 
ought to be, just and good. Consider the patience of 
thy readers and the infirmity of thy poor weary worn 
scribe, whose strength may be dried up as a potsherd 
by these midnight chills, and wife and children left 



136 

forlorn— accusing me perhaps, when dead, of having 
more affection for thee than for them. 

Lo these thirty years have I been with thee through 
many a scene of inward and outward change 1 I have 
sat with thee and walked with thee many whole days, 
and waked with thee many whole nights, on moun- 
tain and plain, in cottage and mansion, in crowded 
city and in lonely wood. I have shouted with thee 
in the madness of mirth— wept many streams of pre-? 
cious tears — -or groaned with unutterable anguish. 

"When yet thou wast young and knew not to speak 
thine own thoughts, I understood and felt what thou 
meant ; whether thou wailed with thy widowed mo- 
ther, and heard the sad tale of despair that her son 
should visit Academic bowers ; — singing in mournful 
strains of Babel's streams ; looking up to the widow's . 
stay and orphan's friend ; the father of the fatherless 

in his holy habitation Or care forgotten thou turned 

thine ear to the toothless mouth of age, then thy sole 
oracle ; and listened the long winter evening to rude 
truth and bold fiction ; or fixed thine eye on the 
sacred page and the rude life of the great hero, then 
thy sole library. For thou loved the bold and hardy 
face of nature and men yet at large among nature's 
works. Thou loved not to hear the sickly strains of 
Chloe ; or of gentlemen swains and lady milkmaids — 
heaving bosoms and fainting lovers — velvet lawns and 
flowery carpets ; but preferred the wide field to the 
garden inclosed; the woods and wilds to the fields ; 
the rugged mountains to the smooth plains ; and the 
roaring torrent to the purling brook. And oft wast 
thou in Judah's land listening to the horn of the herd- 



137 

men of Tekoah, gazing with pleasing wonder on the 
bold image of nature in the fountains of living waters 
and streams of Lebanon ; or high on the mountains 
of Engedi, and thy locks filled with the drops of heaven, 
keeping watch by night. Now with thy sword girt upon 
thy thigh because of the enemy ; now grappling the 
paw of the lion and the bear ; now with thy foot upon 
the neck of the proud Philistian. For thy delights 
were with the sons of freedom, and precious were 
their triumphs in thy sight. Thou joyfully went forth 
with Irsael from the house of bondage, and sprang 
with Judah to take the harp from the willow — and 
loved to see his garments dyed red in the blood of 
Bozrah. 

The new-born infant beyond the great water had 
thy fervent prayers ; and thou wished unchristian 
wish on all who sought the child's life. 

But chiefly the place that gave thee birth was the 
hallowed spot of thy fondest devotion ; because the 
field of freedom's battles and freedom's victories. 
Thou would fight her battles o'er again, vying even 
with the great hero to accept the proud challenge to 
single combat, spurring on thy steed with fearless 
valour, and with steady heart and bold arm cleav- 
ing the foe asunder. Or thou would haste as an 
eaglet to the mountain to see o'er all the plain, where 
the armies of the aliens were put to flight, and the 
proud Roman was driven back. 

I was with thee, too, when thou caught the holy 
fervour, and became of the new creation ; when thou 
tasted the hidden manna and walked with angels in 
white. And oft was thou on cherubic wing, listen- 



138 

ing in the third heavens to unutterable things ; or 
singing the new song to the response of Seraphim. 
But when faith became weak and doubt strong, then 
thou became bold to search for the secret record — to 
try the gordian knot of three cords in one thread ; 
which thou cut asunder because it could not be un- 
tied. And when thou was tortured as on the wheel 
of a tyrant to find out the principle of the perpetual 
motion ; and the construction of the lock on the ada- 
mantine gate, — starting back with horror to gaze on 
the sun, — 'wondering if the same hand made both ; for 

thou was in doubt But thou hated tyrants ; and if 

God were a tyrant thou w r ould hate God, and curse 
him to his face. If heaven were ruled by a coequal 
and coeternal trinityship of Neroes and Jefferieses and 
Lauds, thou would rejoice to be in hell fighting against 
them. If the lively oracle of thy sweetest counsels 
showed thee an Almighty despot, thou w 7 ould tread it 
in the dust ; nor allude to the monstrous tale and 
hateful fable. And if thou could not make new rai- 
ment for thyself, thou would rather borrow 7 rags from 
classic beggars than take garments from nature if 
made and polluted by the hand of a despot. When 
thou was taken into training, thy sorrows thickened 
around thee in dark clouds threatening an endless 
and sleepless night. For they put thy neck in the 
yoke, and bowed thee down under heavy burdens ; and 
made thee serve with rigour to hard task-masters, fit 
themselves only for beasts of burden ; who required 
fruit and took away the seed and germof excellence ; 
and ruined every vegetative quality in the native soil. 
Can man stand erect under a heavy burden ? can 



139 

he walk firmly and freely with his feet in fetters ? can 
he be bold without freedom ? can he make discovery, 
creeping after blind guides ? can he be original with 
his eye upon models ? 

Yet the senseless and unfeeling task-masters de- 
mand brick, and take away the materials of which it 
is made ; they call for a rich harvest where they have 
spread desolation and sown barrenness. The oppres- 
sor requireth a song from the oppressed, when they are 
forlorn by Babel's streams with the harp upon the willow. 
Much thou tried to find thy way through the la- 
byrinth ; like a poor bird in the snare of the fowler, 
that struggles till strength fails and then lies down in 
hopeless sorrow ; or as it droops in the wiry prison, so 
did thou sorrow in silence, wishing thou had never been 
born. Yet still thou w r as one who had not borne the yoke 
in thy youth, and whose free spirit could not be wholly 
broken. And still would the faint echo of the sound of 
freedom awaken those warm emotions w T hich had so 
often roused thee into rage at tyranny. Though 
thou would sometimes peep about Colossus, and 
stand before the model of classic taste, and try thy- 
self at the mirror of fashion, thou would turn away 
with a mixt feeling of shame and contempt ; resolved 
to think thine own thoughts, and speak thine own 
words in thine own manner, or be dumb for ever. 

Oft indeed was thou reproached and scoffed by the 
regulars ; but thou w 7 ould rather be put to death for 
contumacy, or be drummed out of society, than fall 
into the ranks and obey the word of command, and 
follow the motions of the fugal man ; or be made the 
puppet of drill-sergeant or dancing-master. 
Long was thou as a care-worn troubled spirit wander- 



140 

ing from place to place and from book to book, ne- 
ver finding, like the poor dove from the ark, rest to 
the sole of thy foot or companions to thy mind ; but 
at last, and only but as yesterday, thou found those 

whom thy soul loveth And would joy and sorrow 

with the man of nature, stand with awe in the 
presence of My Lord, sit at the rich banquet of 
Isaac, cheered with the choice wine of Jeremy, rising 
from the feast as a giant refreshed. For though an 
humble guest, thou never felt as a needy dependent, 
who must pick up the crumbs at their feet ; or live 
upon fragments from their table. Thou was free and 
independent with them, as with the herdmen of Ju- 
dah in the days of thy youth. If thou but touched 
the hem of their garment, thou felt healing virtues for 
all thine infirmities ; and when they cast their mantle 
over thee, thou was roused with prophetic spirit, and 
longed to go forth. 

Now thou was wholly free : the angel of deliverance 
not only opened thy prison gates and set thee at large, 
but gave thee cherubic wings wherewith thou might 
fly as a mighty angel with thy scroll in thy hand. And 
thou would place me on the pinnacle of nature, show- 
ing me all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of 
them in a moment of time. And instead of trudging 
at the heels of dull doctors, as if thou wert made to 
carry their boxes and cases of patent medicines after 
them, thou could smile at them with their wise saws 
and nostrums and classic wigs and spectacles ; pity- 
ing their poor patients becoming lean and sickly in 
proportion as they swallow their pills and sovereign 
remedies. 

If Doctor Divinity came with a stately air hold- 



141 

ing out his prospectus of a valuable work to be pub- 
lished by subscription, thou would tell him bluntly, 
he had nothing to sell that thou wanted ; for thou 
would rather make ten critical notes and comments 
and sermons than read one of his. If Doctor Meta- 
physical came with his fine-spun silk, thou would in* 
form him that thou used no silk but when weaved 
into stockings and handkerchiefs and waistcoat 

o 

pieces ; and that thou would rather have something 
created out of nothing, than nothing created out of 
something ; and that if he could not give to his airy 
nothings a local habitation and a name, he must keep 
them corked up in his own bottles, for thou had none 
sufficiently air-tight to hold them. 

And if Doctor Rhetoric or Doctor Philosophy 
came kindly informing thee (lest thou should not find 
it out) that thou must not look for originality, thou 
would tell him, that was the only article thou meant 
to buy, and had already bought it, and paid for it 
many times over ; and that now though thou had not 
a hundred volumes in thy library, one half of thern 
were duplicates of the other ; besides many others 
that thou had packed off to old stalls ; and that ought to 
have been sent to Newgate, or Botany Bay, having 
swindled thee out of much time and money which thou 
could ill spare. Besides, that thou never liked to en- 
courage supplanters ; as Jacob who came after Esau, 
Americus who came after Columbus, and Archdea- 
con who came after ingenious Edward Search ; with 
whom thou had spent many a pleasant hour ; and with 
whom thou would rather spend eternity, than a single 
day with all the copyists that ever served a seven 
#ears apprenticeship in either of the great manufac- 



142 

tories. Those who cannot afford to keep a conscience 
and some originality shall never be afforded a night's 
lodging under thy roof. 

But to conclude, which is the last finally of the 
preacher when he hath no more to say. We left off 
in the middle, like the story of the bear and fiddle ; 
but if the public like the first half, they shall have the 
second ; if not, we shall keep it to ourselves. For 
we are both too proud and too prudent to give much 
labour and money to supply lodgements for dust, beds 
for spiders, and paper bags for snuff. Too much of 
our money, though little of our labours, has gone that 
way already. We are not ambitious of the praise of 
authorship, and therefore do not mean to purchase it 
with money ; for, alus ! like diploma, it is not worth 
buying. 

Go forth, then, thou uncourteous, uncivil, unpolite, 
and daring adventurer ! Perhaps like the Cossack in 
London thy very strangeness will draw multitudes 
a round thee ; though it is likely they will come to- 
gether not to wonder at an uncouth ally, but to de- 
stroy a fierce enemy. Thou art an Hebrew whose 
maxims and manners are diverse from all people 
round about : thou art an Arab ; thy hand is against 
every man, and every marTs hand will be against 
thee. Law, learning, philosophy, music, and politics, 
ithe fine arts and fine sciences and fine tastes will all 
rise in arms against thee. Doctor Metaphysical will 
aim at thine eyes with his electric fluid ; Doctor Syn- 
jtax will dip his iron and Doctor Rhetoric his golden 
( arrow in black poison and aim at thy heart ; and some 
quack doctor reviewer will give thee a sly dose 
to make thee sleep soundly for ever. The bow of 



143 

Orpheus and th e bow of Cupid. will be drawn against 
thee; and Venus will concentrate all her killing 
glances to cut or break t hy heart in pieces . The 
shades of the dead, and the spirits that haunt the 
smooth lakes and purling brooks and shady groves 
and velvet lawns will come forth against thee. And 
all who worship day and night in the divine presence 
of ancient models will lift up the chisel and the brush 
against thee, as if thou wert a Cossack going to burn 
Paris. And woe be to thee and to me if the general 
lead his forces against us ! resistance will be vain ; 
and the enemy will give no quarter. Yet it shall 'be 
my consolation in dungeon, torture or death, that I 
am scape-goat and sin-qfFerui? for thee, to deliver 
thee from the ^rave: 

But perhaps they will deal wisely with thee ; say- 
ing : Let it alone, lest it spread abroad among the peo- 
ple, and be rendered popular like martyrs of old by 
cruel treatment. And thou may be doomed to eter- 
nal sleep, or perpetual imprisonment in some dark 
cell ; a companion of dust and spiders, without bene- 
fit of habeas .corpus and open trial by fair and com- 
petent judge and jury. If brought to trial at all, thy 
judge may be a courtier like Jefferies ; thine accuser 
may be a hired accuser ; or false, malicious and cruel 
as Satan against Job; and thy jury-men and those that 
witness against thee may be all packed and bribed. 
And thou as a sheep before her shearers is dumb ; or 
a lamb that is led to the slaughter, must open not thy 
mouth ; for, if thou bleat truth and evidence and re- 
monstrance, it will be new offence and aggravation of 
the old. 

Perhaps thou shalt be sold at the mean price of a 






144 

slave, to be tortured and torn as the purchaser pleaseth; 
or sent forth from the presence of classic men with a 
mark of outlawry upon thee, that every one who find- 
eth thee may destroy thee ; that the hand of common 
hangman or common carman may burn thee for a 
heretic ; or thrust thee into the purgatory where 
there is no purification : or despising thee as deserv- 
ing only the death of vermine, they may poison thee 
with tobacco-juice and mercurials ; or as if thou de- 
served to be hung in chains with felons, and exhibit- 
ed in the pillory with the vilest of the vile, they may 
expose thee on old book-stalls too sordid to be even 
touched, and too mean and vile to be bought at any 
price. And I may be grieved to see thee thus ex- 
posed ; and, moved with compassion or respect, may 
buy thee and carry thee home with me ; as I have 
often procured my venerable Lord and Isaac and 
Jeremy from some mean and mercenary Pilate, who 
could not or would not distinguish between the pre- 
cious and the vile. 

Go, and I will follow thee with parental fondness, 
as the tender mother her darling son when he leaves 
her to try the wide world. I have not prefixed my 
name to thee; because it could be no diploma of 
value, or passport to popularity ; but I will never be 
a Judas to betray thee, or a Peter to deny thee. If 
I were, my own speech would bewray me, and my 
own heart would condemn me ; and no floods of bit- 
ter tears would ever wash the foul meanness and per- 
fidy out of its recollection. 

THE EXD. 

Printed by Hit hard and Arthur Tayhr, Shoe-Lane, London. 

RD 18.4 



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